What is Maria Sharapova’s superpower? Hint: It’s not the tennis dress

NEW YORK – On Aug 25, the first day of the US Open women’s singles draw, two days after her induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and five years after she officially left the game, Maria Sharapova once again stood centre court in Flushing Meadow, Queens, to receive an official US Open ring.

As usual, she wore a tennis dress designed to make history.

Specifically, a new version of the tennis dress she wore when she won the US Open in 2006.

That one, inspired by Hollywood actress Audrey Hepburn’s little black Givenchy dress in the iconic film Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) and bedecked with Swarovski crystals at the neckline, was the first “evening” dress worn by a female competitor.

It was also the first time a player had worn a different look for a night game than a day game, and overnight, it made Sharapova one of the first tennis dress influencers.

Her dress on Aug 25 was similar, though rather than stopping at her upper thigh, it is mid-calf length with a long pleated underskirt.

“It’s a version of the dress for someone that’s grown up,” said Sharapova, 38, a few days before the ceremony. And it was a sign she was getting ready to compete again – though this time in a new arena.

Sharapova’s legacy as a player is complicated. She was never a beloved tennis figure. Often referred to as the “ice queen” during her time on the women’s tour, when she won five Grand Slam tournaments, the Russian famously saw her peers not as comrades-in-arms, but obstacles to be eliminated.

Injuries and a 15-month doping ban further complicated her story, and she retired in 2020.

But she was also among the first athletes to think of themselves as a brand, a strategic approach that made her the highest-paid female athlete in any sport for 11 consecutive years, from 2005 to 2015. And this despite being ranked No. 1 for only 21 non-consecutive weeks.

She was the face of Tag Heuer, Tiffany, Porsche and Motorola, and was one of the first tennis players to demand a seat at the Nike design table. She was a front-row presence before athletes on the front row were a regular thing.

She paved the way for what has become “this merger of sport and fashion”, said Mr Martin Lotti, chief design officer of Nike, who was a member of the team that worked with Sharapova on the 2006 little black dress. “She helped create that, not just in tennis but for other sports as well.”

She was friends with former American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, attended the Met Gala more than once and announced her retirement in Vogue.

Yet, at a time when many other athletes are following a playbook she wrote, looking to fashion as a way to kick-start the second phase of their careers, Sharapova is changing her game.

She is not a face of Italian luxury fashion brand Moncler; she is a member of the board. Her reality TV role was as a guest judge on business series Shark Tank (2009 to present).

In January, rather than going to the Australian Open, she went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She has been sharing her opinions about women and leadership.

And this autumn, she will enter the podcast fray with Pretty Tough, a new show from Vox Media in which she will interview female power players of all kinds about their experiences, and how being perceived as aggressive, spiky and blunt – all words often used to criticise women – can actually be an asset.

For her, fashion was never an end; it was a means.

Performance pressure

When Sharapova retired, it would have been easy for her to fall back on the tennis dress. After all, pretty much every time Grand Slam season rolls around, a new Maria Sharapova fan account pops up recapping all the tennis looks she wore while playing.

There was the white tie-and-shorts combo at Wimbledon in 2008; the lemon-yellow sundress style at the French Open in 2011; the crimson frock with the New York skyline picked out in crystal at the US Open in 2007.

In part, the attention on her clothes had to do with the style of the dresses, which skewed more teatime than tennis, and in part it was because she was among the first ​​Nike athletes to get her own looks.

Custom dress reveals are now an essential part of tournament strategy, but once upon a time, that was unheard of. “Nike had so many athletes, there were many times where you end up wearing the same dress or the same skirt and top as your opponent,” Sharapova said.

That happened to her at Wimbledon in 2006. “There was like, a conscious part of me that said, ‘Oh, if I do well and become a champion, I would love for that to never happen again,’” she said. The difference is that she did not say it to herself; she said it to Nike.

Sharapova thinks of that incident as her first boardroom experience. She used to sit in on her contract negotiations because, she said, her father told her that “although you might not be familiar with all the terms, this will set up your financial trajectory for the next 10 years”.

The scariest choice

Of all her post-tennis pursuits, the one that scared her the most was joining the Moncler board.

“I was really hesitant to take that role. It was very intimidating,” said Sharapova, whose British fiance is Alexander Gilkes, one of the founders of online auction house Paddle8. They have a son, aged three. 

Still, Moncler chief executive Remo Ruffini thought she could bring the perspective of someone who understands sports culture in general and was not afraid to speak her mind.

It is the speaking part that may now prove most relevant. It is what took her to Davos, where she talked about women’s leadership for CNBC and IBM.

It is also what inspired the dress she asked her Uruguayan fashion designer friend Gabriela Hearst to design for the Tennis Hall of Fame formal ceremony, which is a white silk gown with a matching cape, like a superhero’s. The dress, Hearst said, reflected the point Sharapova wanted to make in her speech, which she had said was about the superpower of being heard.

She firmly believes that it is about time everyone recognised that the qualities required to become a Hall of Fame female athlete are pretty much the same qualities required to become a successful chief executive.

“There are a lot of parallels between sport and business,” Sharapova said. “Everything from the competitive nature of an industry to the need to invest your time and, quite honestly, a lot of money in a project you believe in and not see a return for a long time. The effort it takes for any female athlete to get to a professional level and compete for millions of dollars in front of millions of eyeballs is huge, and not enough is said about it.”

She is going to start talking. NYTIMES