Getty ImagesThis evening, Tom Brady will grace the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his statuesque figure for the pomp and circumstance of the 2017 Met Gala. But unlike past years, he won't be in attendance just as a guest—the New England Patriots player will be a co-chair of the event, alongside Katy Perry, Pharrell and his wife Gisele Bündchen.
Seeing Tom Brady host fashion's biggest (and most expensive) evening of the year among a crowd that is decidedly far more culturally-inclined may seem like an odd pairing, but it's actually one moment in a long history of the magazine's obsession and partnership with the sports world's boldest names.
Like everything at Vogue, it starts (and ends) with Anna Wintour.
While the editor-in-chief can't often be described as enthusiastic, she's as close as she'll ever get to that emotion about sports. Having been raised in a posh British family, and enjoyed many vacations among the country club zeitgeist of eastern Long Island, tennis is one of her strongest passions. Wintour has been one of veteran Roger Federer's biggest fans for near decades; viewers of The September Issue will remember her cutting into a meeting with photographer Mario Testino, "Did you see Roger's match yesterday?"
Passion doesn't translate to the page in every single case, and it was Vogue's annual Shape Issue that began to bring athletes into its very specific, very exclusive corner of the fashion world. The first iteration hit stands in 2002, and the magazine has since dedicated every April's tome to, as they put it, "celebrating the beauty and well-being of bodies." It originally began by showcasing, say, Brooke Shields well into her pregnancy, but by 2008 they realized that truly the most impressive "shapes" were that of professional athletes.
LeBron James appeared on the cover, basketball in tow, and the magazine instantly began embracing the fact that athletes, with their many millions of dollars just waiting to be spent on designer clothes, were the perfect target market for fashion. And, even more so, many readers (and prospective readers) are more apt to idolize Serena Williams or Tom Brady than they are to lust after the accomplishments of a supermodel they may or may not know on a first name basis.
The late aughts and the early part of this current decade were all about courting sporting's best and brightest, at least for Anna Wintour. Next up after LeBron James was the New York Knicks star Amar'e Stoudemire. The basketball player has a penchant for styling himself to the nines, what with his love for cardigans and button-ups and bow ties that we promise you looks better all together than it sounds. He began showing up in the front row of runway shows alongside the Vogue editrix, and it wasn't long after that that he appeared in the glossy's pages. He would go on to credit himself as the pioneer of the athletes-as-fashion-star movement, so it's safe to say that some of Wintour's sartorial confidence rubbed off on him.
That was followed by a massive Olympics-themed edition in the summer of 2012, honoring Team USA's best before they shipped off to London. Ryan Lochte and Serena Williams nabbed coveted cover spots, and Dwayne Wade was photographed shooting hoops with supermodel Karlie Kloss for a spread. Earlier that year, Wintour and her daughter had mingled with the NBA star in the front row of the rag & bone show, so it came as no surprise to then see that translate into a full-fledged photo shoot. (It's sometimes hard to tell what comes first: An athlete's appearance in the magazine, or the athlete's friendship with Wintour, but often times it's all one and the same).
Russell Westbrook, star of the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Victor Cruz, a current free agent in the NFL formerly with the Giants, have both turned their friendships with Wintour into full-fledged fashion hobbies. Cruz has taken on sponsorships from the likes of Hublot watches and Givenchy and is a constant fixture on the fashion party circuit. Westbrook turns every public-facing opportunity into his own personal catwalk, and has become known for his lavish outfits—like the time he arrived to a playoff game in Givenchy overalls. Yes, Givenchy overalls.
All of this of course means that athletes have been taking the Met Gala by storm. In the early aughts there was a sports star here a David Beckham there, but as of late it's been a flurry. Amar'e Stoudemire attended as the date of Rachel Roy, Lala and Carmelo Anthony have walked those hallowed stairs several times, Cruz is a full-on regular, and who could forget Odell Beckham's attendance—or, more specifically, Lena Dunham's cringe-y reaction to her perceived slight.
Now that Tom Brady has risen to command the highest honor of all the Gala attendees, the pressure is on, fashionably speaking. He's no novice to the fashion world, but here's hoping he takes a cue from his fellow athlete's style and goes for something a little bit more exciting.