When seven-time world champion Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton left his Mercedes-Benz team for Scuderia Ferrari, Mercedes found itself in a vulnerable spot. Not only had they just lost their best driver on the track, but they lost the gravity of his cultural force off-track.
Hamilton has arguably become the biggest F1 star, with 39 million Instagram followers and partnerships with brands including Dior, Lululemon and Tommy Hilfiger. He’s one of the key facilitators for fashion getting involved in the high-tier racing class; now, Ferrari would bask in his glow. To move its cultural momentum forward, the Mercedes team had to come up with a plan. It quietly listed a “clothing executive” job, a hybrid styling and fashion partnerships role. By early 2025, Eleanor Coleman had been hired as the team’s first-ever styling and partnerships manager.
“The creation of the styling and partnerships manager role is part of a broader commercial strategy aimed at strengthening our fashion and brand partnerships,” says Richard Sanders, chief commercial officer of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team. “While Lewis [Hamilton] was certainly a major reason for F1 embracing fashion, this role was conceived to ensure continuity and to further professionalise our approach to fashion, making it more strategic and impactful.”
What was once built around one star has now been absorbed into an organisational strategy — a safeguard against cultural drop-off and a way to scale fandom across the team. “While Lewis was key to our original approach, the platform he used to express his natural style was created in conjunction with the team here,” says Sanders. That foundation is now being scaled for its other drivers, including George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, who have six million and one million Instagram followers, respectively. “We want to keep investing in fashion collaborations that resonate with our broader audience.”
This shift in approach — making fashion a formal part of the commercial playbook — isn’t unique to F1. Across sports leagues, a similar move is underway.
In the NFL, stars like Joe Burrow and Saquon Barkley prove that fashion credibility is cultural credibility with real commercial value. Burrow’s stylist, Kyle Smith, reported that the quarterback’s appearance in a backless Peter Do suit at Vogue World in 2024 generated $20 million in media impact value (the monetary value of posts, article mentions and social media interactions). The moment was orchestrated by Smith, who was recently named the NFL’s fashion editor, underscoring just how much stylists can elevate the visibility and commercial impact for both fashion brands and athletes. Pierre Mahéo, creative director of Parisian label Officine Générale, saw retail impact after Super Bowl champion Barkley was styled in the brand by Joshua McPherson. “Seeing the fresh faces in sports [who are] influencing American style has been interesting. Our men’s customer in the States finds inspiration in different places than Europe, and I love to see how Saquon has worn the brand and the stores saw interest in the pieces,” Mahéo says.
Courtney Mays, who has worked with four-time WNBA champion Sue Bird and New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart for several years, told Vogue Business that brands choosing to work directly with experienced stylists involved in the women’s basketball league would help them to “truly understand what representing these athletes authentically actually means”.
Smith says that the right fashion moments don’t just expand a player’s cultural reach — they open new demographics for teams and leagues, alike. “I always say [to NFL athletes], what was the first concert you went to, and do you have a T-shirt from it? And then when you wear that Sade T-shirt, now you have a new fan that maybe wasn’t your fan before,” he explains. This psychological connection allows for prospective fans to see “a bit of themselves in the league, and that starts their fan journey with football, with that player”.
For teams looking to grow their fanbases, fashion serves as a powerful acquisition tool, with stylists acting as facilitators to deliver the right moments to the right players and gain access to new audiences. “We definitely have our hardcore fans on lock,” Smith continues. “The question is, how can we reach new audiences or just a new demographic of people? Fashion is a great way to do that.”
Building a holistic fashion strategy
Unlike personal stylists at the athlete level, a league or team stylist plays a cross-functional role — bridging social, marketing, partnerships and cultural strategy to shape how the organisation shows up off the field.
“I feel like the biggest business justification for my role is our helmet-off marketing,” says Smith. He explains that fashion serves as the vehicle for these off-field moments. Like when Smith is creating social content of players getting dressed for their tunnel entrances, it ultimately helps “to build that fandom between players and our [NFL] audience”, he explains.
However, experts agree that a stylist is just one piece of the puzzle. To fully leverage fashion as a strategic tool, sports organisations need to think holistically. “In an ideal world, a major sports organisation would have a creative director, an in-house stylist, an in-house production manager and [an] in-house partnerships [manager] who is specifically focused on fashion,” says Daniel-Yaw Miller, a sports business and fashion journalist who also runs SportsVerse on Substack.
Brand strategist Hayden Freedman, who often works at the intersection between fashion and athletics brands, stresses the importance of partnerships managers in driving conversion at team level. “Investing in a smart partnerships manager is one way that you could create a lot of impact across different parts of the consumer marketing funnel if you’re a team or league,” says Freedman. In practice, this role would own the strategy behind fashion-facing partnerships — identifying which brands make sense, ensuring collaborations align with the team’s functional and cultural identity, and turning cultural relevance into measurable business growth through KPIs related to acquisition, conversion, media value and impact on brand equity.
Miller also emphasises that teams need to treat fashion with the same strategic intent as other commercial initiatives.
“One of the biggest things that I’ve spoken about in sports, both in Europe and the US, is that a lot of their partnerships or initiatives as they relate to fashion can seem haphazard without a strategy,” he continues. “Hiring stylists can help build a collective strategy, which helps not just one or two players in the team, but the team overall.”
What’s next?
The question is no longer whether or not fashion roles matter within sports organisations, it’s how teams should structure them. Experts agree that styling, partnerships and creative directors should work together to maximise collective return on investment.
Within his role as the NFL’s fashion editor, Smith sees fashion as a long-term play for audience expansion as well as an essential part of large-scale sports organisations going forward.
This year’s Super Bowl was the most fashion-y yet. If the two industries successfully cross over, there’s lots of money and big audiences on the table.
“Every player wants something different: some just want a personal shopper, others want curation, others are looking for creative direction, and some want a holistic suite of services including brand connections, fashion week invites and getting players culturally immersed within the fashion conversation,” explains Smith. “Fashion touches everything. So to look at fashion in a vacuum does not help anybody trying to leverage it. It’s touching our consumer products department, our player engagement department, our social department, our comms and PR department.”
Miller sees stylists as the key to a broader team strategy. “If [stylists are] given enough freedom and seniority, they can inform a broader fashion strategy for the team as a whole,” he says.
At the business level, from Sanders’s perspective, fashion’s ROI is increasingly tangible: “It creates opportunities for cross-industry collaborations, driving media value and brand equity.” But at its core, he adds, fashion is a way to “truly connect with our fans”.
It’s clear that for teams in 2025, fashion is no longer an afterthought — it’s a strategic asset that belongs in the commercial playbook.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Richard Sanders s surname. (2/4/25)
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