The New York Liberty’s mascot is turning the tunnel walk into her own runway. Ellie the Elephant was already famous for twerking, doing the Ashanti scoot and snapping her braids during games, set to the music of Mary J. Blige or Lil’ Kim.
But this season, she’s been in a fashion league of her own, delighting her 160,000 TikTok followers with extremely sassy “get ready with me” videos and showing up to games in exclusive designer gear. Like a proper celebrity, Ellie has her own stylist — two of them, in fact, Criscia Long and Shenay Rivers, known as her “aunties” on social media. For the first Barclays Center home game back in May, they dressed Ellie in a turquoise Liberty jersey dress from luxury sportswear label Rare Breed BX and a Telfar x UGG shearling-lined suede bag.
Fans flipped out at the sight of the sashaying mascot carrying the $420 bag. “That’s when we really knew, ‘Wait, we’re doing something bigger than we’ve ever imagined,’” Long said. Now, designers are lining up to work with Ellie, proving that brand deals are not just for the athletes.
New York-based artist Nina Chanel Abney — who has a partnership with Nike’s Air Jordan – chose Ellie as her muse, outfitting the pachyderm in a custom Liberty Jordan jersey dress with turquoise Jordan sneakers. But Long and Rivers also shop for looks for Ellie off the rack, sometimes at stores like H&M or Forever 21, then work with costume manager Alexis Leatherwood to bedazzle the clothes wi.