Seeing Serena by Gerald Marzorati

Author:Gerald Marzorati [Marzorati, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

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A couple of days after the gala, I dropped by the New York Times offices to talk with Vanessa Friedman, the paper’s fashion director and chief fashion critic. I was coming from the Met Museum, where I’d seen the Costume Institute’s camp show, and Friedman had just finished writing about it, so we discussed that a bit—how it was refreshing to see a museum show of any kind based on an idea, and how the show managed to stay with you, made you think. When I brought up Serena Williams, the reason I’d come by to talk with Friedman, the first thing she said was “I don’t think of Serena as a fashion person. She has a clothing line, but so do a lot of people. A fashion line is a trendy way to diversify your personal brand. It’s an effective way today, a pop-culture way, to reach people.”

So how did Friedman see her?

“I think Serena is much more interested in her power as a cultural figure. She’s such a complicated figure. She’s a great athlete. She’s clearly interested in celebrity—look at her friendships. And then you have all these worlds colliding: sports, celebrity, film and television, fashion. You saw that at the Met Gala. You see that on social media. It’s all pop culture. Serena has moved from tennis into this world. She’s interested in her power there.”

Friedman brought up the 2016 Pirelli calendar. The calendar was an annual, limited-edition “art item” released by the Italian tire company. It had typically featured twelve photographs, one for each month, of nude or almost nude models. But for the 2016 calendar, shot by Annie Leibovitz, the preeminent celebrity photographer of her time, the portraits were of women from various realms notable for their abilities and power. Agnus Gund, the philanthropist, for instance. Patti Smith. Both of them were photographed fully clothed. And Serena Williams: topless, but shot from behind, her muscular back and shoulders displaying the years of fitness training that helped to make her serve and groundstrokes what they were. “It was a statement about achievement,” Friedman said. “Serena was slowly coming to embrace her status and role as a symbol.”

Friedman wasn’t sure—and wasn’t sure Williams was sure—where she would take this. She had developed a role for herself as a celebrity working mom, relaying stories on social media and offering advice and inspiration. Then there was the careful portrayal, online and elsewhere, of her marriage as a modern partnership of equals. (Ohanian, too, was projecting this in his appearances and his posts, advocating, among other things, paternity leave to deepen spousal equality and the at-home responsibilities of fathers.) And there was her emergence as an entrepreneur and investor—a woman with money who was interested in using it to help other women build their businesses. Friedman talked about Rihanna, whose cosmetics line, Fenty Beauty, launched in 2017, was an instant success, with its diversity-informed range of blushers, compacts, bronzers, and on, all available online and in stores in more than a hundred countries.

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