By OkayGoal
Fashion has become increasingly visible in women’s soccer, extending beyond team uniforms to matchday arrivals, club merchandise, and international kit collections. Creative professionals behind these projects help shape how the sport looks and how players, clubs, and national teams express their identities.
Some work directly with players to develop their personal style, while others design performance apparel or create merchandise that connects teams with their supporters. Their approaches differ, but they share a commitment to bringing fashion and soccer closer together.
From stylist Sydney Bordonaro to Nike designer Yazmin Rosete and creative director Dominique “Domo” Wells, these professionals help shape the evolving relationship between women’s soccer and fashion.
Sydney Bordonaro: The Stylist Behind Soccer’s Matchday Looks
Sydney Bordonaro is a sports stylist and creative director who has styled former soccer players Christen Press and Tobin Heath. Her personal styling approach helps athletes express their personalities through clothing, especially outside their usual uniforms.
In a June 2026 episode of The RE—CAP Show, Press and Heath spoke with Bordonaro about her career, her transition into styling, and her approach to fashion. The episode offered a glimpse into the work behind the outfits that have become increasingly recognizable at players’ public appearances.
Styling Beyond the Uniform
For soccer players, personal styling can mean preparing outfits for interviews, promotional events, travel and matchday arrivals. These looks offer opportunities for self-expression outside the sport’s standard uniforms.
Bordonaro’s collaboration with Jaedyn Shaw also illustrates how styling can intersect with cultural storytelling. In May 2025, the stylist worked with Shaw and Vietnamese American fashion designer Thái Nguyễn on a custom áo dài made from Shaw’s North Carolina Courage jersey, which she played for at the time.
The project connected Shaw’s identity as a professional athlete with her Vietnamese heritage. Bordonaro’s work also highlights the importance of styling in contemporary soccer culture, where clothing can help players communicate their identities away from the pitch.
Thái Nguyễn: Bringing Cultural Heritage Into Soccer Fashion
Fashion designer Thái Nguyễn offers another perspective on the relationship between soccer and clothing. The designer collaborated with Bordonaro and Shaw on the custom áo dài that the NWSL featured in May 2025.
Reimagining a Soccer Jersey
The áo dài is a traditional Vietnamese outfit consisting of a long tunic worn over trousers. For Shaw’s garment, Nguyễn proposed transforming her personal soccer jersey, including its name and number, into the outfit itself.
The result combined a recognizable piece of sportswear with a traditional Vietnamese garment. The collaboration was highlighted during Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, connecting the project with Shaw’s family background and cultural identity.
Nguyễn’s contribution is best understood as fashion design rather than personal styling. While Bordonaro helped with the styling collaboration, Nguyễn brought his design expertise to creating the garment. The project demonstrates how soccer clothing can become a starting point for creative work beyond conventional sportswear.
Dominique “Domo” Wells: Redefining Women’s Soccer Merchandise
Dominique “Domo” Wells is a multidisciplinary creative director and designer whose work spans fashion, music, and sports culture. In March 2024, the Washington Spirit appointed her as its first creative director and designer, giving her creative direction for the club’s merchandise.
Wells also founded Dead Dirt, her creative studio and design brand. Her work shows how merchandise can extend a team’s identity rather than simply be a collection of products with its logo.
From Club Merchandise to Fashion
One of Wells’ early projects with the Spirit was a limited-edition Cherry Blossom collection inspired by Washington DC’s famous springtime blossoms. The collection brought a recognizable element of the city’s identity into the club’s merchandise.
Wells continued developing projects with the Spirit, including collaborations with Dead Dirt. Her work has also extended beyond a single club: a 2026 Cultured profile described her as creating merchandise for NWSL clubs across the league. This broader work is important because each team has its own location, supporters, and visual identity.
Wells’ work sits at the intersection of fashion design and creative direction. Instead of styling individual players for appearances, she develops merchandise and visual concepts that help clubs connect with supporters through clothing.
Her career also reflects a broader change in how women’s sports approach merchandise. Team apparel can function as everyday fashion, letting supporters express their allegiance through pieces they wear beyond the stadium or match day.
Yazmin Rosete: Designing the Future of Soccer Kits
Yazmin Rosete is a senior designer in Nike’s Global Football Apparel division. Her work includes designing soccer apparel, placing her on teams responsible for developing kits that combine visual identity with athletic performance.
In February 2026, Nike unveiled its new NWSL kit collection. The collection included designs for clubs across the league, with new uniforms for expansion teams Boston Legacy FC and Denver Summit FC and additional designs for established teams.
Nike identified Rosete as a senior designer involved in the collection and quoted her discussing its creative direction. “The growth of the NWSL — including its fandom, athletes and influence — only continues to bring renewed energy to the global game. For 2026, we wanted to create kits that embody this bold spirit, make a statement and let the rich stories of each club’s legacy play out in new ways, both on and off the pitch,” she said regarding the designs, according to Nike.
Combining Performance With Local Identity
The 2026 NWSL collection drew inspiration from the histories, communities, and identities associated with individual clubs. This approach adds a cultural dimension to kit design. Colors, patterns, and visual references can communicate a team’s identity while making its uniform distinctive.
Rosete’s role should not be confused with sole responsibility for every design in the collection. Nike describes the kits as a collaborative effort involving the league’s clubs, and its announcement identifies Rosete as a senior designer contributing to the broader collection.
Her work nevertheless illustrates the complexity of modern soccer apparel design, where a garment must represent a team while meeting the physical demands of the sport.
Sydney Kehoe: Designing International Women’s Soccer Kits
Sydney Kehoe is another apparel designer working behind the scenes of international soccer. A University of Delaware alumna, she works at Nike and was part of the team responsible for creating kits for 16 national teams, according to the university’s July 2025 profile. The collection included uniforms for teams competing at UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, including eventual finalists England and Spain.
The Design Work Behind National Team Uniforms
Kehoe’s involvement in the 2025 national team collection illustrates the collaborative nature of this work. The finished uniforms reflect the work of a wider design team rather than a single individual.
Her role also highlights the contributions of apparel designers, whose names may be less familiar to fans than those of players or major fashion labels. Kehoe’s experience at Nike provides another perspective on the professional design work supporting women’s soccer, complementing Rosete’s involvement in the NWSL’s 2026 kit collection.
Arianna Dipollina: Telling Stories Through adidas Football Design
Arianna Dipollina works on adidas’ football design team and contributed to the brand’s 2025 federation kit collection, which included uniforms for women’s national teams competing at UEFA Women’s Euro 2025.
Adidas profiled Dipollina in February 2025, describing how her Tuscan background, interest in art, and research-driven approach informed her work on football apparel.
Art, History, and National Identity
One of the designs discussed in the profile was Italy’s green away jersey, an unusual choice that moved away from the country’s more familiar blue national team colors.
Dipollina’s work illustrates how kit design can draw on references beyond a team’s traditional uniform. Art, cultural history, color and visual research can all contribute to a design, giving supporters new ways to interpret a national team’s identity.
Dipollina’s profile also offers a glimpse into the research behind football design. Her work places her among the designers contributing to the visual identity of women’s international soccer, where national team kits are both performance garments and symbols of national representation.
Grace Wales Bonner: Bringing High Fashion to Football
Grace Wales Bonner is a British-Jamaican fashion designer known for combining European and African cultural references in her work. Her collaboration with adidas and the Jamaica Football Federation brought her fashion perspective into football kit design.
In 2023, Wales Bonner collaborated with adidas on kits for Jamaica’s men’s and women’s national teams, alongside an off-pitch collection. The project brought fashion design into a sporting context while drawing on Jamaica’s cultural identity.
Beyond Conventional Sportswear
The collaboration showed how a fashion designer’s distinctive visual language can influence football apparel. The Jamaica kits also illustrated the potential for collaborations between established sportswear companies and designers whose work originates in high fashion. Such partnerships can introduce new approaches to color, detailing, and cultural storytelling while keeping the uniform’s practical purpose.
Wales Bonner’s involvement is especially relevant to women’s soccer because the collection included the Jamaican women’s national team. Her work helped bring the team’s visual identity into a broader conversation about football, fashion, and national representation.
Unlike a personal stylist, Wales Bonner contributed as a fashion designer working in collaboration with adidas. Her example shows how creative professionals from outside traditional sportswear design can help shape the look of national teams.
The Creative Professionals Behind Women’s Soccer Style
People working in women’s soccer fashion hold roles ranging from personal styling and independent fashion design to the development of club merchandise and technical kits.
Bordonaro helps players express their identities through clothing, while Nguyễn’s collaboration with Shaw demonstrated how a designer can transform a jersey into a culturally meaningful garment. Wells develops merchandise and creative concepts for professional soccer, while Rosete and Kehoe work within Nike’s football apparel design teams. Dipollina contributes to adidas’ football design work, and Wales Bonner has brought her fashion perspective to Jamaica’s national team kits.
These professionals should not be treated as interchangeable. A personal stylist’s work differs from designing a garment, and creating a performance kit involves different responsibilities from developing merchandise or a fashion collaboration
Together, however, they show that a broad creative network shapes the style surrounding women’s soccer. Their work connects the sport with fashion, cultural heritage, local identity, and personal expression, adding another dimension to how clubs and national teams present themselves beyond the pitch.
Featured image via @sportsillustratedfc