wbna fans are fitted & hype sorunke is documenting all the fashion
"Sports has always been a part of cultural creation, and I don't think there's been that much of an eye towards it."
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Hypatia “Hype” Sorunke is a multimedia artist based in New York City who started photographing fans at New York Liberty games in 2022. However, last season she took on the project in earnest, traveling to all 12 WNBA cities to photograph the local fanbase for a photo book called Fitted WNBA.
The project is part lookbook, part archive and focuses on the fashion of queer fans and non-men in the WNBA space. It’s a logical progression of Sorunke’s studies and interests in the art and aesthetics of Black history and Black queer history, which eventually landed them in the women’s basketball space. However, once there, they realized that there was very little documentation or information about the fashion of women’s basketball players and fandom. And so, Sorunke set out to create the kind of book they wished existed.
Below, we chat about the project, the importance of archives, and what makes the WNBA space so damn fashionable. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Fitted WNBA is available for pre-order and is shipping mid-June. The companion zine, Fitted W, is available for order now. Follow Fitted WNBA on Instagram or TikTok.
Out of Your League: Can I ask just a little bit about the origins of the Fitted WNBA project and how it started?
Hypatia Sorunke: It came from a lot of different places and interests. My background is, I got this degree called Plan II Honors—if you went to UT Austin, you know what it is—and another degree was in African and African Diaspora Studies. So I did a lot of Black history research, and I had minors in government and a Creative Writing certificate.
For my Black history degree, I did a lot of research in art and art history, and took a lot of time to line up these art trend timelines with political timelines, and that was what I really enjoyed. And so I actually came into this project because I was looking at relational aesthetics from the 1960s to 1980s in Harlem, and looking at this idea of what a ‘empowered’ or ‘embodied’ Black woman in media was. I was looking at anything from documentary to films to photography portraits of some of the more standout movement leaders of the Black power movement and beyond. That’s how I got into thinking about this, and wanting to have more information about specifically Black queer women that were playing sports, but more specifically basketball, and not being able to find readily accessible [information].
I was looking for books to try to learn about fashion, and anything that had to do with basketball and fashion through the years. I found this book that I was like, ‘Yes, holy grail. It's about to be the best thing ever and answer all my questions.’ It was called Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion. It was basically an anthology of fashion in the NBA, period. And then I was like, ‘Oh, cool, this thing I’m looking for doesn't necessarily exist.’
And the author of Fly, Mitchell S. Jackson, I was watching all this press of him talking about the project, and what intrigued me was that he actually credited the LGBTQIA movement for him being able to make the book, because that's the underlying power behind the evolution of men's fashion. And once he said that, I was like, ‘Great, so then, where is it?’ And that is where the first seed was planted in like, ‘Oh, I could possibly just do this.’
OOYL: I think there's so much here. You are touching on the lack of documented history and credit of women athletes and queer women athletes and Black women athletes and masculine of center women, and it all just comes together in this project. It's like the perfect storm of a population that was really erased, visually and narratively, from a lot of history.
HS: Even thinking about the fashion space, like sizing, right? Someone who is 6’7 is not gonna be able to just walk into Kohl's and be like, ‘Yeah, I'm gonna grab this,’ or go into a Nordstrom. I think you can see that through the draft outfits over time. You can see how there's more of an eye towards a tailored look as we get more contemporary. But I really credit that to the accessibility of fashion trends that are helping create this perfect storm of opportunity to really play with what it means to be an athlete—a woman athlete, or in the women’s sports space—at this time.
I will say, I do use that as a blanket term, mainly because I feel like it's such a gendered space. But I do think that we are talking about the women's sports space in all of its ‘other-ness,’ right?
OOYL: Yeah, I appreciate that. It's something I think about, too. I tend to say, ‘athletes who play women's sports.’ This is something I have documented for a long time, which is the erasure of these gender diverse athletes. Last year, I got to speak to stylists who work with masculine W players, because I think the feminine players often get a lot of eyes on them and their fashion, understandably so. But there's another side.
It's also been wild to see how rapidly a lot of these players have become fashion icons, after being ignored in this space for so long. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you've noticed as these players are finally being embraced, and rapidly entered the public eye?
HS: I think the biggest thing is about the accessibility, like I was talking about. Even thinking about the Met Gala, right? Courtney D. Mays is the one who who styled Jonquel Jones and Courtney specifically is a menswear consultant, which was interesting to me, because when I was thinking about the sizing difference, even when I started dressing myself and I wear larger sizes, I really did have to turn to the men's fashion just because I could wear something that actually fit comfortably. So then when I saw that this stylist, her bread and butter is menswear, [this brings us back to] Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion, and Mitchell talking about the evolution of menswear and that malleability in that space to have comfort for all genders. That isn't necessarily as put forward because it is menswear, period, and the men's space is so prominent in that gendered, stoic, strength, and ‘masculine’ masculinity.
I really appreciate a lot of the stylists and players, like Tiffany Hayes is doing a really great job, but I think she has an eye for herself and her own fashion. She has her own brand. I love Courtney Williams, you know? I think the energy matches the fit all the time.
OOYL: She also styles herself!
HS: That's the thing, right? Even whenever you do get into this genderqueer space, it's really hard to find someone who knows you better than you know you, or even has experience in the space, to be able to dress someone. And going back to Courtney Mays, I was listening to this talk that she gave, because Sue Bird, towards the end of her career, this was the stylist that she chose. And one of the first conversations that they were having was Sue being like, ‘Yeah, I want to kind of explore this more masculine side or this androgynous part of myself.’ That way, maybe she could alleviate some of the older—I don't want to say ‘trauma,’ because I don't know, personally—but some of the older, early-2000s forced spaghetti straps and the forced photos.
I do think that through the evolution of players being able to be more out about who they are, I think that's what's really allowed for people to be more open and receptive to what they want to be known as, more than what people perceive them as. I see that across the space.
OOYL: As you've been documenting the history of fan fashion in this league, what stands out to you in terms of trends that you've noticed?
HS: In order to do this project, I divided in my brain the cities into these two buckets. One is more ‘high fashion cities,’ and that just means that the way the fans or people who are attending the game show up isn't necessarily always to rep the team, or isn't always to have a player's jersey, or even to have something from Round21 or Playa Society, but more just to express themselves in the space. And then the other one was more of this ‘fandom fashion,’ where you do see more of these very intricate and sometimes even personalized clothing that they specifically made to rep the team, or that reps certain players.
So for the top fashion cities, New York was up there and then a very close second, I will say, was Chicago. I think that was the only other place where I was running out of film, because I was like, ‘Oh no, I have to keep taking these photos.’ I want to credit the Angel Reese effect, but the other part of it is just Chicago in itself being this very eclectic and very culture-producing city. And then I'll throw in another one—I still haven't decided if this is my bias or not, because I’m from San Antonio and the San Antonio stars eventually moved to Vegas to become the Las Vegas Aces—so I'm gonna throw Vegas in there. But also because it is one of these very high traffic places. You have a lot of different people coming to Vegas, coming in and out. So I think those would be my top three fashion cities in terms of, if you want to step out and be seen, you will be.
In my prediction for this year, I think LA will be a little bit better, just because I think LA has a lot of potential. I love LA. I was living sitting there for the first quarter of my first LA Sparks game, just looking up at the rafters in awe. But I do think LA will be better in terms of people showing up, because last year they didn't have that good record. But now they have a couple of new pieces and are in the conversation a little bit more so I think they'll be up there in terms of the fashion cities.
When it comes to the fandom fashion, I would say the top one is Indiana, and I'm saying that because I saw maybe 100 different variations of the Caitlin Clark shirt. Every single one was different. There's not one store that's just stocking all of this. And also, Indianapolis is very much a sporting city. I will say Seattle is up there, I saw a lot of vintage Storm gear, and I think that just speaks to the legacy of the Storm and everything they've done. Seattle is also one of those [teams] where you can find a lot of cool vintage stuff from the beginning.
And then Minnesota, that was one that was cool, because a lot of people really took the theme and ran with it. I'm thinking specifically [about] this one photo I took of this couple who had on Minnesota Lynx jerseys, but then their pants were—one of them was wearing these camo neon green-blue pants, and then the other one was tiger stripes with the same neon green and blue. So still very much like you'll be able to find things that could be fashion statements, but in the colors of the actual team, which it's not really easy to find those two colors put together.
And for this upcoming year, I think that Dallas is going to be up there. And maybe that's just the Texas in me. But from at least last season, the number of people or new fans following the rookies [means there will be a lot of fans of Paige Bueckers]. Which is not to say Dallas wasn't fitted before—they were more on the fashion side but now I think more people are going to be able to rep the Wings because I think they're going to be coming out with a lot more on the merch end. So that's one that I'll put on the fandom side, but I would love to see them just step out.
OOYL: Seattle had some really cool merch last season. There was a dope denim jacket with like ransom letters on the back, and there was a very cool varsity jacket (neither are on the website this year). I emailed the team to see if I could find out more about who had designed them because not every team had cool stuff like that, but I never heard back. I mean, my local team is Connecticut, who has the worst merch ever.
HS: I'm gonna say, whenever I did go to Connecticut, I was so excited because I thought I was gonna see some old or very vintage UConn merch and stuff that was, like, deep in the archives. And I was really disappointed every time. I also think part of it is just the Connecticut of it all. No shade, I did get some good photos, but usually, whenever I walked up to someone and asked them to tell me more about themselves they were like, ‘Oh, I'm actually up here from New York,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, let me just go find people who are in Connecticut who are fans.’
OOYL: I've seen some videos, too, that you've put out about what the building of this archive looks like in the physical sense, the physical things that you've collected as part of that. I wanted to ask you about that as well, because I know you're working on a book of photos, but you're also collecting a physical archive. Do you see these as part of the same project, or are there longer-term goals around the physical pieces?
HS: The best way I'm conceptualizing the photo book is like a WNBA lookbook because it is this archive of fashion, right? It's just different ways that people are expressing themselves. And in the book, I'm also going to have an essay that I wrote on legibility, just to contextualize this process of me showing up to the games and my interactions and that process of people being able to feel seen in the space in a way where there hadn't really been a concerted effort to document this before. I'm not the first person to take photos of the games, but maybe in this way.
And then in terms of the archive of collecting little things, I work in this multimedia space, and because my background is through zine making, I wanted to have something through which I could contextualize my experience doing the thing that didn't necessarily disrupt the final product, if that makes sense. The physical archive is probably going to live in a behind-the-scenes zine where I talk about some of the more standout experiences that I had in a very l0fi, not heavily-produced kind of way. And because that was something the beginning that I really struggled with in terms of thinking about the project was how much of myself to insert, versus how much of myself to just experience.
It's easy when everything's already in front of you and people are dumping stuff like, ‘here's an archive,’ and you get to piece it together, But when you're actively building it, there's a lot of things that go into it. Like, my bias was, I was looking for specifically non-men who were just fitted, or who were trying to express themselves in this space, in any way, shape, or form across the country. So that's my bias. That was something to deal with, right? That's something that I know I'm trying to put this lens on.
So yeah, I didn't want to take up too much space in the photo book. And so that's why I was like, let me just do a zine where I'm like, ‘Look, this is mainly about the people that I photographed,’ and then this part is more about me.
OOYL: I know this is a very broad question, but why do you think that the WNBA is deserving of a project like this?
HS: My answer is also kind of hidden into the idea of what the importance of an archive is. Where we're seeing this constant changing of records, this introduction of AI, this barrage of attacks on defunding education, I think that shifts the importance of memory to personal archives, and that's why people are taking more of an initiative to try to document themselves in some ways. If the books are being wiped, I want to, at least, be seen in some ways. Sports has always been a part of cultural creation, and I don't think there's been that much of an eye towards it. Obviously, there's been a couple undercurrents, a couple sparks here and there, but right now, we're seeing it be so mainstream that these players are at the Met Gala for [basically] the first time ever, and so I think the WNBA deserves to have an eye towards the people who are supporting the thing that's keeping it going. It's time to honor that.
I don't necessarily want to say the WNBA deserves it, but people who have been supporting women's sports and women's basketball deserve to be acknowledged for their contributions, even if it is just showing up. There's so much power in presence that we're starting to see the shift towards people understanding that—showing up and being around and witnessing the thing is really important, or is just as important as witnessing anything else. Whenever I was doing this, I was trying to have something that I could potentially send back to my home state of Texas, and have a kid look through it and maybe see parts of themselves in it, or feel even affirmed that even though all of the media is saying, ‘We hate trans and queer people in sports,’ that's actually not true, and that there's a community of people who are ready and willing to support you.
Fitted WNBA is available for pre-order and is shipping mid-June. The companion zine, Fitted W, is available for order now. Follow Fitted WNBA on Instagram or TikTok.
This was such a fun and fascinating read! Whyyyy is the Connecticut merch so bad?? Praying someone makes a change lol.