Zendaya’s Method Dressing Grand Slam

In collaboration with her long-time stylist Law Roach, Zendaya has curated a series of tennis-themed looks for her Challengers press appearances that blur the line between costume dress-up and luxury occasionwear. Known as method dressing, this phenomenon came to the fore last summer during Margot Robbie’s Barbie tour, providing myriad opportunities for brands across marketing and product development (see The Merch Boom).

As we’ve been tracking in Sports & Active: Key Growth Opportunities and Tennis’s Stealth-Wealth Style Boom, tennis is having a major moment – spanning both performance wear and pure fashion. Tennis-inspired get-ups are hot topics online: according to Instagram trend tracker @DataButMakeItFashion, the popularity of “tennis style” in online posts grew 80% between March and April 2024. TikTok videos under “tennis outfits” have garnered 27 million views – a figure that’s sure to grow this summer, post-Challengers.

But it’s not just tennis’s popularity that’s made this press tour so impactful: Zendaya and her fashion choices are hugely influential and, as of February 2024, Instagram posts featuring her outfits generate 109% more likes on average than other celebrities.

Zendaya was an early adopter of method dressing, wearing weblike motifs at Spider-Man premieres, leaning into carnival aesthetics for The Greatest Showman and regularly being hailed as one of the few Met Gala attendees who really commit to the theme (she’s co-chairing this year’s iteration, titled Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion). Additionally, Zendaya’s most recent press tour for Dune: Part Two embraced on-theme apocalyptic visuals and post-human styling (also, see our A/W 24/25 Fashion Direction: Solstice).

This trend is only getting started. Read Halloween Download 2025 for cues on upcoming cinema releases set to make a sartorial impact – most notably the two-part movie musical Wicked, starring Ariana Grande.