Paris: Omega House, an ornate mansion in Paris on the left bank of the Seine, will host exclusive soirées during the Olympics. High on the guest list will be Australian swimmers Emma McKeon and Kayleigh McKeown, who, along with George Clooney, Nicole Kidman and Cindy Crawford, are global ambassadors for the Swiss watch company. McKeon may well wear Dior, the high-end French fashion house for which she is an ambassador.
Another fashion house, Oroton, has enlisted soccer player Hayley Raso to promote its clothes, while fellow Matilda Mary Fowler has become an ambassador for cosmetics giant L’Oreal Paris. The Vogue cover featuring Sha’Carri Richardson. Credit: Vogue The sponsorships used to come from breakfast cereals, Milo and swimming costume companies.
But an exponential growth in the popularity of women’s sport has catapulted female athletes into the wealthy world of luxury fashion and onto the covers of magazines once dominated by actresses and supermodels. Vogue editors around the world were told to put female athletes on the digital cover for the Olympics, a move that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago due to the belief, borne out in sales, that female athletes don’t sell. Vogue Australia’s July cover, now on stands, features five Olympians, including McKeown, skateboarder Chloe Covell and sprinter Torrie Lewis.
Harper’s Bazaar featured the Matildas’ Ellie Carpenter. The most influential of them all, United States Vogue , put sprinter Sha’Carri Ric.