Fashion Show Spotlights Gender Parity & Demand For Women’s Sports Gear

For the first time in Olympic history, the 2024 Paris Games have numerical gender parity on the field of play with the same number of female and male athletes competing. To celebrate the historic milestone for women in sport, Angela Ruggiero, a 4X Olympic medalist and former IOC Executive Board Member and IOC Athletes’ Chair, and Fashion Industry Expert, Phoebe Mackay, partnered with The Coca-Cola Company to host a fashion show called PARiTY Paris.

The runway show took place on Saturday night at The Coca-Cola House in Paris and was hosted by 4TheWalk, which is a brand dedicated to promoting and supporting female athletes through fashion-forward merchandise and experience. Twenty Four Olympic and Paralympic Athletes served as “model athletes” during the event, including stars like Dawn Staley, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Amy Purdy, Eniola Aluko, Ebony Morrison,Pauline Ado and more.

Each model athlete showed off their unique style that emphasized their spirit, achievements and contribution to this historic moment for women athletes. As they walked the runway, not only did the model athletes promote the empowerment of women across the sports industry, but they used the moment to celebrate the progress that women’s sport has achieved to-date.

“It’s exciting that more girls and women have the opportunity to compete for their country,” said Angela Ruggiero. “I’m glad that the world is watching and that more athletes will have those allocations to represent their country.”

In addition to celebrating the historic Olympics gender parity milestone, the event also aimed to shed light on the untapped potential of the women’s sports merchandise market. Earlier this month, Ruggiero’s team at Sports Innovation Lab and global payment solutions company, Klarna, released a study that revealed that the potential women’s sports merchandise market size is $4 billion, and that there are significant disparities when it comes to availability & quality in women’s sports merchandise when compared to men’s sports. According to the report:

• Women’s sports fans make more purchases per year than men’s sports fans and spend more per year on merchandise than men’s sports fans.
• Even without ever attending a game live, 67% of women’s sports fans still make merchandise purchases.
• For every 9 pieces of men’s sports merchandise that are available for purchase, women’s sports have just 1.
• 60% of fans who searched for and intended to buy women’s sports merchandise did not make a purchase because of inventory issues.
• 79% of surveyed respondents reported they would purchase more women’s sports merchandise if there were more options available to them, while 28% reported they could not find a style they liked.

As the first runway show in Paris to feature only women athletes, the event helped highlight the intersection of fashion and women’s sports. According to Ruggiero, “It’s going to widen the aperture and bring more people into this conversation. This is going to bring the fashion world to the sports world.”

In addition to The Coca-Cola Company, the event was supported by Visa, Intel and Toyota.