WNBA players promote fashion ahead of Saturday’s All-Star Game in Phoenix

WNBA fashion has been gaining momentum for a few years, thanks to avant-garde trendsetters A’ja Wilson, Kelsey Plum and Skylar Diggins-Smith. It’s a stark change from the late ’90s and early 2000s, when players and coaches almost exclusively wore traditional business attire, often mixed with masculine flair (male NBA players had their own fashion crisis at the time, according to SB Nation).

Today, the WNBA tunnels (sports jargon for stadium entrances) feature chic, menswear-inspired looks paired with micro minis, six-inch pumps and leather trench coats.

Fashion bible Vogue has declared the WNBA tunnel its new runway, and Saturday night’s All-Star Game has all the makings of a pre-game fashion show.

April’s 2024 draft kicked off with No. 1 overall pick Caitlin Clark wearing a structured satin shirt and crystal crop top by Prada. Before her season-ending ACL injury, second overall pick Cameron Brink wore a sleek, ultra-modern black one-shoulder dress with cutouts, while No. 7 Angel Reese wore a shimmery, gunmetal hooded dress worthy of an awards show by Australian label Bronx and Banco.

WNBA players earn a fraction of what their male counterparts do. Fashion — and the lucrative brand endorsements that can come with it — could boost the earning potential of the league’s players.

The promise of new sponsorships for athletes and more attention for the WNBA in general led Christopher Ruff to create the WNBA League Fits social media account. Ruff has been a WNBA fan since he saw Los Angeles Sparks player Lisa Leslie two decades ago and in 2021 started thinking about how he could attract more fans to the league.

“Fashion can be used as the first step to get people to look at the actual product and put more eyes on it, and that’s the game,” Ruff said.

A player’s outfit can express his personality and creativity, which can resonate with people who don’t normally watch basketball. Tunnel fashion is the individual glamour before the game-wear conformity.

But many athletes don’t have the luxury of big-name fashion houses knocking on their doors, so they’re getting creative. WNBA stylists are scrambling to find Italian fabrics and tailor looks for players who don’t have big-name sponsorships, says fashion publicist Velissa Vaughn, who runs an Instagram account dedicated to WNBA tunnel looks.

“They just want to embrace their creativity and self-expression,” Vaughn told The Post.

Some companies, like Napheesa Collier, prioritize emerging brands that are women-owned or Black-owned, or sold by local boutiques, rather than buying the same look from big retailers.

The growing popularity is good for emerging designers, Vaughn said, and for fashion-conscious athletes.

“When you see where things are going now, the respect and the admiration from pop culture and society, it’s so valuable,” Vaughn said, “because these players are doing well in so many different ways, not just on the field.”