To say Angel Reese was busy on her 22nd birthday would be an understatement.

That morning in May, at home in Chicago, the young basketball star practised with her team, the Sky, in preparation for her highly anticipated rookie season in the WNBA, North America’s top professional women’s basketball league. In the evening, she would fly by private jet to New York and attend her first Met Gala, wearing a custom look by 16Arlington: a turquoise sequined dress with a deep neckline and feathery mini-skirt.

The next day, the 6-foot-3 forward was already back in Chicago for the Sky’s pre-season game against the New York Liberty. Critics attacked Reese for her turn at the Met Gala, accusing her of not being focused. Reese answered them with a tough offensive game that included 13 points and five rebounds, helping Chicago to a blowout victory over New York.

The duality she exhibited in that 48 hours — fiercely competitive, unapologetically glamorous — is as concise an encapsulation of Reese as you get. The Baltimore native had played her final college game on April 1 before triumphantly declaring for the WNBA draft in a Vogue feature two days later. In July, just ahead of the WNBA’s mid-season break, she would travel to Paris as a guest of Pharrell Williams, Bernard Arnault and Anna Wintour to take part in a star-studded pre-Olympics event at Fondation Louis Vuitton.

When the league resumed in late August, Reese set a WNBA record as the fastest player ever to surpass 20 double-doubles (which in her case was double digits in points and rebounds in one game) in a season. Along the way, she fronted a campaign for Good American, inked deals with L’Oréal and Revolve and released her first collection with Reebok.

In the not-so-distant past, there was an expectation that rookie female athletes would keep their heads down, focus on honing their skills and leave the limelight to more seasoned pros. Reese is the antithesis of this view, and has laid down a new playbook for young women sports stars aiming to build their profiles — and grow their commercial value — far beyond their day jobs.

Her first whirlwind months as a pro are testament to her ability to juggle building her image outside the game of basketball while still dominating on the court, a balance she has maintained since shooting to fame after she led the Louisiana State University Tigers to their first-ever National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) championship in 2023 — a watershed moment for both her basketball career and her commercial endeavours.

“When I won the national championship, that’s when everything kind of went through the roof,” Reese told The Business of Fashion.

Her rise comes at a moment when athletes are increasingly becoming their own brands, at times even more influential and recognisable than the teams they play for or the companies which seek to endorse them. Fashion has become a critical component of how they brand themselves and show off their personalities, while their visibility and cultural clout make them great partners for fashion brands aiming to bolster their own images and reach new audiences.

Today, Reese is far and away the most-followed WNBA player on social media, with more than 8.2 million followers across Instagram and TikTok. Among her most-viewed TikToks is a pinned clip from 2021 showing off several off-court fashion looks mixed in with on-court highlights. It’s captioned “Get you a hooper that can do both.” Other videos take followers through pre-game outfits and handbag purchases, reflecting an off-court image that earned the nickname the “Bayou Barbie” at college.

At the same time, Reese is an aggressive player. Though a wrist injury ended her debut WNBA season just shy of the playoffs in September, she still comfortably recorded one of the most dominant rookie performances in the league’s history. And it’s this unique mix of personas — delivered in a direct, playful and unfiltered manner — that has made her one of the WNBA’s breakout stars

“I make sure my nails, hair, lashes and edges are done, and then I take it to the court,” Reese said. “That same girl must still be a competitor and a dog on court. I’m all about normalising that you can live both lives — you don’t have to just be an athlete.”

A Fashion All-Star

Reese, who grew up in Baltimore and enrolled at the University of Maryland before transferring to Louisiana State in 2022, arrived in the WNBA in April as part of a draft class of superstar rookies including Caitlin Clark — the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer — and Cameron Brink that helped usher in a new era for the league.

Until this season, growing hype around women’s basketball at the college level had failed to translate into WNBA viewership and commercial interest in the pros. But 2024 has seen unprecedented international media coverage, stadium attendance, TV viewership and merchandise sales, along with long-overdue attention on older star players in the league who had fought to grow the game for years.

The explosion of interest in the WNBA and Reese’s soaring profile are deeply intertwined, insiders say.

“Angel’s growth is so remarkable because not only has she matured and adapted to the league so quickly, but she’s simultaneously growing the sport, making it relevant to new audiences and also building her off-court businesses at the same time,” said Swin Cash, the WNBA legend and three-time champion, who currently serves as vice president of basketball operations for the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans.

What has set Reese apart, even from the other star rookies, is her natural ability to build and monetise her personal brand, seamlessly blending her interests in fashion, beauty and music with her athletic prowess. It began at LSU, where she developed the “Bayou Barbie” moniker, a reference to the school’s swampy location in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the attention Reese lavishes on her lashes and nails (though she now goes as “Chi Barbie” after relocating to Chicago).

For Reese, fashion has offered a means of signposting her personality to prospective brand partners. In the WNBA, she has used the pre-game “tunnel walk” (where players arrive at the arena) as her own personal runway show, turning up to games in eye-catching outfits from brands like Balmain. It helped her land a deal with online retailer Revolve, whose stylists help source tunnel-walk looks from some of her favourite brands, like an Alexander Wang bodysuit paired with Chanel sneakers. For her red carpet moments — like her draft night and Met Gala appearances — she often works with stylist and Vogue fashion editor Naomi Elizée.

“Angel uses the tunnel walk as yet another channel to communicate this persona of hers that’s larger than basketball — she’s building out the Angel Reese brand,” said Velissa Vaughn, a PR and marketing specialist, former college basketball player and creator of WNBA Tunnel, an influential Instagram account that tracks players’ pre-game style.

Though Reese is a fan of luxury labels from Chanel to Miu Miu, she has, so far, largely worked with mass-market brands. But Vaughn said the calibre of labels that want to be associated with Reese is already somewhat remarkable for a female basketball player. For her to have been invited as a guest to Louis Vuitton’s Olympics event, despite not competing in the games herself, was telling. A lifelong admirer of the fashion industry, she dreams of one day walking in a runway show at Paris Fashion Week, ideally for her favourite brand: “I’m a Chanel girl, hands down, let me say that,” she said. Louis Vuitton is also high on her list.

Reese wants to design her own label one day. She’s getting a taste of the experience with Reebok, which last year announced her as the face of the brand’s newly re-launched basketball category, run by Shaquille O’Neal, Reese’s idol-turned-mentor and business partner on her new podcast venture, along with fellow NBA legend Allen Iverson. Both O’Neal and Reese made their name as college basketball standouts at Louisiana State University, and after meeting at an LSU football game, O’Neal, a former Reebok athlete himself, quickly identified her as a rising star. Reebok signed her to a deal in October 2023, and in August 2024, Reese released the first collection of clothing and sneakers that she helped to design.

“The women’s game is evolving rapidly, and Angel is right at the forefront of that transformation, and she deserves credit for that,” said O’Neal. “She’s showing fans — especially the young kids — that you don’t have to fit into a box or be just one thing. You can be anything you want to be.”

The Business of Angel Reese

Fashion holds greater importance to Reese than a simple hobby or a personal branding moment — it’s about building a business outside of her day job.

For female hoopers, building income beyond basketball is not just a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity, thanks to the relatively meagre pay afforded to professionals in the WNBA.

For example, Reese — the 7th overall pick in the WNBA draft — signed a four-year deal with the Chicago Sky worth $324,383, amounting to a salary of $73,500 in her rookie season, according to Spotrac, which tracks player contracts and salaries. It puts Reese’s rookie pay only marginally above the average annual wage for full-time work in Illinois, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. By contrast, Donovan Clingan, the 7th overall pick in the 2024 NBA draft, signed a four-year, $31-million contract with the Portland Trail Blazers.

To this day, many of the best and highest-paid WNBA players are forced to go overseas in the long off-season to supplement their wages. That, too, is something that has hampered the ability of players to properly market themselves and snag brand deals, because for more than half the year they are away from the key US market and out of the American media’s eye.

But Reese was among the first generation of college athletes to be able to make money from their name, image or likeness, colloquially known as NIL, after a change in the NCAA’s policy in 2021. Her social media presence had already given her a following far greater than the majority of WNBA players, allowing her to capitalise on interest from brands.

“I want to create generational wealth... Something Shaq taught me from day one was that you have to own things, you have to have so many different income streams beyond basketball because, eventually, basketball does stop.”

“Angel represents this new gen of female basketball players — they’re businesswomen. They’ve entered into so many opportunities that were not afforded to me or the women before me in college or in the WNBA,” said Cash, a number two draft pick in 2002.

By the time Reese left college, she was already generating millions of dollars from endorsement deals and campaign appearances with companies like Airbnb, Beats by Dre, Tampax and several others. Alongside fellow LSU student-athlete Olivia Dunne, Reese was tapped as a cover star for Sports Illustrated’s September 2023 “Money Issue,” which analysed why the college’s athletes were so dominant over “the new college sports economy.”

The following month saw the signing of her landmark Reebok deal, which will involve the creation of an Angel Reese signature sneaker — another element designed to cement her status as one of the WNBA’s hottest properties. (There are just three active WNBA players with signature sneakers on the market, compared to over 30 in the NBA.) Upon entering the league, Reese’s NIL valuation — the projected monetary value of her name, image and likeness — was $1.8 million, per On3, a news and data outlet focused on college and high-school sports.

“I want to create generational wealth,” Reese said. “Something Shaq taught me from day one was that you have to own things, you have to have so many different income streams beyond basketball because, eventually, basketball does stop,” she said. O’Neal has given her business advice since her college days, even down to setting up her own LLC through which to run her commercial affairs.

Reese has carried this business-minded approach through to her pro career. In May, she was announced as a founding investor in DC Power Football Club, which will compete in a new top-tier women’s soccer league in the US this year. She has also ramped up her brand deals, fronting the campaign for a new denim line at Kourtney Kardashian’s Good American label in May.

August was a particularly busy month: Reese launched a fashion collaboration with chocolate brand Reese’s, after fans had called on the parties to make the no-brainer partnership for years. She also announced a new podcast, “Unapologetically Angel,” in partnership with O’Neal’s Jersey Legend Productions.

Reese also knows her off-court endeavours will only be boosted by her on-court success, for which she has great ambitions.

“I came to Chicago to be a [WNBA] champion and that’s what I want to achieve — hopefully, by the end of my career, I’ll have an MVP award under my belt too,” she said.

The Uglier Side of Sports

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Overnight fame began a long stream of millions of dollars worth of sponsorships and brand deals, but it also put Reese in the crosshairs of the uglier side of sports fandom.

Since then, she has faced constant tirades of racist abuse, harsh media coverage pitting her against fellow rookie Caitlin Clark (despite playing in completely different positions) and online trolling relating to her looks, personality and playing style. Vaughn says she frequently has to remove incidents of racist abuse directed at Angel in the comments section of her WNBA Tunnel Instagram page.

“Being a Black woman in the spotlight, fighting not only to grow an entire sport but also against an underbelly of racism, that’s not an easy road. It’s not for the meek of heart,” Cash said.

In August, Reese became the first player in WNBA history to notch at least 20 rebounds — winning balls that bounce back after unsuccessful basket attempts — in three consecutive games. A week later she reached 405 rebounds for the season, a WNBA record. And still, people were on her back.

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One of the loudest gripes from Reese’s critics is that most of her rebounds come from her own missed shots. To debunk that theory, her team ran an analysis in August that showed even without the rebounds Reese wins off her own shots she still comfortably remains the WNBA’s top rebounder.

Though at times it can take a significant mental toll, Reese is undeterred.

“I’m kind of immune to it now,” she said.

She credits the support her family network and the resilience instilled in her growing up by her mother, who raised Reese and her younger brother as a single parent.

And it’s been a good year, after all.

She recently bought herself her dream car — an all-white Mercedes G-Wagon — and expects to become a property owner for the first time in the near future. Not bad for a 22-year-old recent college grad.

Above all else, Reese says her greatest motivator is growing women’s basketball and improving conditions for women in sports across the board.

“After my national championship game in 2022, I understood my purpose beyond basketball, beyond even fashion,” she said. “Just being able to be a Black woman in sports that has a huge platform and can use her voice in a positive light. That’s my role,” Reese said.

O’Neal believes the world has only seen a fraction of what Reese has to offer so far.

“She’s not only breaking records and pushing boundaries on the court, but also drawing in new fans and expanding the reach of women’s basketball,” he said. “And honestly, she’s just getting started.”