Welcome to Show Pony
A love letter to the long-running relationship between fashion and sport.
If every relationship has a story, you could imagine the story of fashion and sport going something like this…
On the surface, the two couldn’t have been more different. One is, by definition, superficial: the clothes we wear and the ways in which we wear them. The other is intrinsic: performance summoned from within. In sport, the most common visible elements - blood, sweat and tears - aren’t accessories, but proof of effort. In fashion, the promise of transformation is instantaneous: slip on a jacket and appear as someone new.
For years, the two stayed apart. Sport was too rugged, fashion too frivolous. But now the lines have blurred. Athletes are front row fixtures at Fashion Week. Luxury fashion houses sponsor jerseys. Pre-game tunnels double as catwalks. Sport has never looked better. Fashion has never been more athletic. What seemed like an unlikely fling is now a committed relationship.
But here’s the truth: that story, like so many others, is an illusion. A glossy cover that obscures something far more compelling. Sport and fashion didn’t just meet, they’ve been stitched together for over a century. What changed isn’t their compatibility. It’s simply our willingness to see them together.
With some distance, it’s clear that these two were always well-suited partners. But the false binary of prior decades (sport is grit, fashion is façade, and never the two shall meet) blinded us to their shared potential. It was this binary, this bias, that painted the lines that kept each running in separate lanes. Anytime there was crossover, there was criticism.
“Too soft.” “Too flashy.” “Not serious.” And so on…
In recent years, that binary has finally cracked, and through the breach has come a flood of new trends, characters, and possibilities.
It’s tempting to point to these as the moment: evidence that the union now finally makes sense. But doing so risks obscuring the bigger picture and erasing those who embraced the overlap when it was still taboo. Those who knew that fashion could be an accelerant to performance, and that effort and aesthetics were never mutually exclusive.
Enter: Show Pony.
Show Pony is a celebration of the long, complicated, deeply compelling relationship between fashion and sport. Not just the drops, the fits, the collabs, or the tunnel shots, but the deeper context. The historical through lines. The cultural flashpoints. The breakthrough trends. The enduring movements.
Because for every Kelce in KidSuper or Angel in Vogue, there’s Namath in a fur coat. Cruyff in two-stripe Pumas. Williams sisters in beads. Lagerfeld sending Chanel surfboards down a fashion week runway. There’s Suzanne Lenglen, leaping in pleats in the 1920s, and Cathy Freeman in a full-length Nike tech suit at the 2000 Olympics.
In all of these cases, flair wasn’t just decoration, but defiance. And Show Pony exists to chart all of its glorious interplay.
Yes, there will be spotlights on the marquee collabs and the buzzworthy trends. It’s stuff I love and am undeniably drawn to. But I also want to dig deeper; into the overlooked icons, the sports on the fringes, and the cultural shifts that have long shaped how we play and dress. Said another way; I hope to stitch together the past and present - making today’s moment legible by revealing the roots it grew from.
So, what does that actually look like?
Expect long-form features. Q&As with insiders. Seasonal rankings. Takes on tunnel fit saturation, sneaker quests, activewear’s next era, tenniscore’s true origins and the resurgence of brands like Umbro and Puma (spoiler alert: barring disaster, this will be the first piece dropping soon).
There will be in-depth analysis on underrepresented sports and scenes - bouldering shoes in China, BMX fits in nightclubs, and the archery-inspired aesthetic sweeping parts of Europe. Throughout it all, I promise to maintain the same sense of fun and expression that defines the field’s most iconic characters.
Ultimately, I want this publication to live up to its name. To prove, as every so-called ‘show pony’ athlete has, that style is more often a sign of greatness than a distraction from it.
If any of that’s of interest to you, then I’d really appreciate you hitting the snazzy pink button below!