Maria Sharapova’s Swarovski Tennis Dress by Riccardo Tisci for Nike

This years’ US Open edition will surely shiny more than usual thanks to Maria Sharapova, Riccardo Tischi and Nike recent collaboration.

Maria Sharapova returns to the U.S. Open (that starts today, on 28.08.2017) wearing a Swarovski-studded tennis dress – that makes every eyes bright – designed by Riccardo Tisci for Nike. The all-black look, featuring technical lace and eyelet-like perforations, will be Sharapova’s uniform for her night matches. The design is not only striking for its high fashion sensibilities—really, when was the last time you saw lace or crystals on an athlete?—but also for its all-black palette, a far cry from the preppy spirit of tennis. “It was always going to be black. It wasn’t even a question of what we were going to do for the night matches,” said Sharapova, curled up on a couch at Nike’s headquarters in New York.

Why black, you may ask? In 2006, Sharapova won the Open in a black dress. “When I think of anywhere that I play, I want to bring a sense of elegance to the feeling that I have when I walk onto the court. That’s what I felt with the 2006 dress, and what I really wanted to relive in this dress is the moment of elegance and thinking of Audrey Hepburn and her classic Givenchy dress,” she said. As luck would have it, Tisci, the former Givenchy creative director, has become Nike’s most prolific fashion collaborator, taking on everything from its Dunk sneakers to creating a full range of athletic apparel in psychedelic florals for the 2016 Olympics. Sharapova added, “There are so many things that really make sense in this collaboration. The inspiration was there from the first moment that we sat down together.”

The look comes complete with a black bomber jacket, tailored to Sharapova’s exact specifications. “One of the things we spoke about is I love this feeling of elegance, but I love to mix it in with masculine pieces and oversize things, and so when we talked about a jacket it was like: We’re going to do a bomber and we’re going to make it nice and big and billowy in the back,” she said. “We worked with proportion a lot, because when you think of elegance and sexiness you always think of things that are streamlined and very body conscious, but I think this is more about a play of materials, textures, and shapes coming together.”

Can’t wait to see her playing in such beautiful exclusive dress!

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