Actress Zendaya and her stylist, Law Roach, have walked a fine line between kitschy and stylish with the actress’ red carpet looks and press tour fashion. While promoting her new movie, Challengers, Zendaya, who produces and acts in the film, drew chic fashion looks from the film’s central theme: tennis.

Roach dressed her in several custom Loewe pieces, such as a plunging green sequin dress depicting a motif of a tennis player on the court. He also worked with Lacoste creative design director Pelagia Kolotouros, who was appointed last year, on a custom two-piece that the actress wore in Australia. The ensemble featured a white sports bra trimmed with sparkly stitching, and the bottoms were tiny white shorts that mimicked a pair of briefs. A long shimmery mesh skirt, accented with a high leg cut, covered the bottoms.

“[The looks] translate the movie onto the red carpet in such a way that not a lot of these movies do. It creates an additional height. But I think that when it comes to the two of them, they understand the assignment,” said Hanan Besovic, a content creator and fashion critic who runs the popular Instagram account @ideservecouture, in a phone interview about Zendaya and Roach’s outfit choices for the press tour.

The Challengers movie and the actress’ press tour looks may have contributed to a renewed focus on the tenniscore trend: According to Instagram trend tracker @DataButMakeItFashion, tennis style in online posts grew 80% between March and April 2024. The tennis craze saw definite movement in fashion culture leading up to the movie’s release.

The Influence Of Sports In Fashion And Entertainment

Clothing companies have also started to tap into tenniscore and sportswear. In March, Skims, a shapewear and clothing company founded by American media personality Kim Kardashian, released a tennis skirt called the Fits Everybody Logo Skirt. Before the skirt’s release, the company was also named the official underwear partner of the National Basketball Association and the Women’s National Basketball Association.

“Sports is such a niche market that has not unfortunately been tapped to its full capacity. One of the really great marketing techniques from Skims was making the Skims for men part of the NBA. I think now people are understanding the value in sportswear, so it’s exciting to see,” said Posh McKoy, a celebrity wardrobe stylist, in a phone interview.

Reflecting this increasingly lucrative shift toward partnership between fashion and sports, tennis star Serena Williams became the first athlete ever to receive the CFDA’s Fashion Icon award in 2023.​

So it’s no surprise that Zendaya’s press tour wardrobe has caught the eye of fashion enthusiasts and fans on TikTok. According to Spate, a company that analyzes consumer trends, tenniscore is trending on TikTok with 256.0k total views at the moment.

The Challengers movie, one of the most anticipated films this year, was released on April 26, and various moviegoers on TikTok wore tenniscore attire to the screening.

The move was inspired by Roach, who, in an Instagram post, requested that fans dress in their best tenniscore outfits to attend.

“I want to see all the Girls , Guys, Gays, THE Dolls and all those that identify otherwise in their TENNIS CORE,” Roach wrote in an Instagram caption.

One fan on TikTok, @fishoutofcloset, wore a navy tennis skirt and a green crew neck with a tennis racquet design. The TikToker captioned her video, “If Law Roach says to wear tenniscore to see Challengers, you wear tenniscore to see Challengers.”

The Value Of Engaging With Fans Through Fashion

Dressing for a movie premiere following the film’s theme is not a new phenomenon. In 2023, fans attended the Barbie movie premiere, a film directed by Greta Gerwig, in droves of pink and Barbiecore outfits.

Method dressing was also a common trope throughout the music industry and the entertainment world last year. Many fans dressed on theme for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour.

“You’re getting the audience involved, you’re getting them engaged, you’re good at giving them a task, you know a lot of them will deliver,” said Besovic about Roach’s request for fans to wear tenniscore to the film’s screening. “They [Roach and Zendaya] take this to another level engaging with the community sharing this love for a movie with the audience, which is super, super cool.”

Throughout the Challengers movie press tour, the actress used method dressing to promote the movie. Zendaya wore a custom Loewe in Rome that invoked the country club setting of the sport, stepping out in a sparkly tennis dress and a pair of stilettos that toed the line of gaudy. The shoes brought a new meaning to the term tenniscore, with the heels piercing through a pair of tennis balls.

“I think we are constantly trying to be inspired by the film—whether that be literally. Like this morning, I had tennis balls in my shoes—or more just the essence of the character or a concept or idea,” Zendaya said during an interview with Vogue.

According to Addison Cain, beauty strategy and innovation manager at Spate, movies often influence the initial “core” trend; fans saw how Barbiecore stemmed from the “Barbie” movie and mermaidcore from Halle Bailey’s “Little Mermaid.”

How Fleeting Aesthetics Linger As Cultural Conversations

“I think what’s interesting about the cores and the aesthetics is they often are this fleeting conversation; they come and go relatively quickly. But then what we see that stays behind are these trends from within the specific aesthetic,” said Cain.

Cain references the initial tenniscore aesthetic that preceded the movie Challengers and how it can be connected to the old money aesthetic trend forecasters and TikTok users saw in the summer of 2023. TikTokers drew the trend inspiration from the Kennedys, Princess Diana, Sofia Richie and even fictional characters like Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl.

According to Cain, old money aesthetics like tenniscore have seen significant interest on TikTok, with 18.5k average monthly searches and 41.8 million average weekly views on the video platform.

Off the runway and press tour circuit, Zendaya recreated a photo of sisters Serena and Venus Williams in a recent Instagram post published by Roach. Photographer Annie Leibovitz took the original image that appeared in Vogue magazine in 1998. In the photo, the two tennis players sat on a couch wearing long striped gowns with large white beads accenting the braids in their hair. The actress emulated the photo, from the beaded braids to the dramatic flowing striped gowns—once again a nod to tennis and the sport’s greats.

“But like now you see a completely different interpretation of tennis. Like the last picture that they [Zendaya and Roach] posted was a homage to Serena and Venus Williams and Carolina Herrera and it just gives you a little more depth of the sport, but I think the tennis has always been a part of fashion,” said Besovic about the Instagram homage.

However, the role that tennis and sportswear play in fashion continues to evolve, whether as a reinterpretation or an expansion of an initial “core” trend. In the past, aesthetics have been recycled as fans rediscover an old style, or reimagined—especially when the right movie or actor comes along.