Zendaya has always aced the red carpet. But her latest press tour is, well, a grand slam.
In recent weeks, the actor has been promoting her new movie “Challengers,” in which she plays a tennis star-turned-coach who must navigate her husband’s career on the courts as he prepares to face his former best friend (and her ex-boyfriend).
And as has become perhaps all-too-expected, her looks have been a symbiotic mix of “method dressing” and personal style — from campy details like tennis balls on her heels to elegant pleated gowns that call to mind classic tennis whites. Zendaya is also on the May covers of both American and British “Vogue,” though neither of the magazine’s shoots delved too deeply into the sportswear space.
“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 a character, or a concept, or an idea,” Zendaya said of the visual storytelling she and her long-term “image architect” Law Roach have sought to achieve in her interview with US Vogue.
Onlookers have come to expect this attention to detail from the duo. Earlier this year, for example, while touring for “Dune: Part Two,” Zendaya’s looks consistently paid homage to the film and its sci-fi dystopia — most notably, she stepped out in an archival (and yet inherently futuristic) Thierry Mugler space suit at the movie’s London premiere.
“What she allows me to do is to come up with the big story, the big idea, and she takes that and she whittles it down a bit,” Roach told British Vogue.
Scroll to see Zendaya’s best looks from the “Challengers” press tour. This gallery will continue to be updated.
During the “Dune: Part Two,” press tour, Zendaya’s co-stars, including Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson and Timothée Chalamet, matched her commitment to the sartorial ‘bit’ with their own red carpet wardrobes. But for “Challengers,” actors Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist have played things a little safer, for the most part in the slouchy menswear suiting space. One notable exception to that rule, however, was the colorful knit sweater and leather pants combo O’Connor wore to a photocall in Los Angeles (pictured top); a more subtle note also came at the film’s London premiere, when he wore under his suit jacket a white T-shirt with the phrase “I TOLD YA” printed front and center, a nod to a piece Zendaya’s character Tashi wears in the movie.
At the Rome premiere two days earlier, the fashion designer (and Loewe creative director) Jonathan Anderson — who designed many looks in the movie — had also worn a version of the tee.
And coming full circle, Zendaya herself wore the tee during her whirlwind of press events in New York in the final run-up to the film’s April 26 release.
