Divya Prabhakar’s ambitious project is cataloging every outfit Serena Williams has worn throughout her career, from her professional debut through the present day. Prabhakar, a lifelong Serena fan, combined her love of tennis and fashion to create a project worthy of the icon herself.
Racquet spoke with Prabhakar about building the Fit-Dex, Serena’s impact on generations of fans and athletes, and why her influence extends far beyond the baseline.
Racquet: You’ve created a Serena Williams “Fit-Dex,” which chronicles about 200 out of—what, 800 of Serena’s tennis outfits? Are you hoping to get every last one?
Divya Prabhakar: I definitely love a checklist. So I'm absolutely hoping to get all of them.
R: How did this project come about?
DP: I started playing tennis when I was four or five years old. So that's around ‘96, ‘97, exactly when Serena started her career. I've watched her growing up—not just me growing up, but her growing up. This was before buzzwords like “representation.” Now, having done this project, I can't believe how serendipitous it was because truly—not to make Serena's career about her looks, but she was someone that was darker-skinned. She was curvy and muscular. And that's exactly who I was.
Growing up, playing on the courts and then going home to watch her, it just felt like anything was possible, like anything could happen. It may sound cliche—people say that about her, but I truly lived it. That kind of star-power, that aura that she has, absolutely infected me. I was all about it whether it was on court or off court. She just always took up more space. She was like, “I'm going to be who I am.” And the colors! Such bold colors, her hairstyles, her jewelry. She showed that you can be so feminine and have taste, but also win so hard.
Recently, I saw a bunch of articles on her best Wimbledon outfits, her most iconic looks, etc.—there's been so much emphasis on her looks—and I began to wonder how it has changed over time. I wasn't satisfied with any visual archive about it. I just want to see what she wore in all the Wimbledons, for instance. I wanted to slice and dice the data, and I couldn't find anything besides the same old magazine articles.
I think I'm the first one to do this on the internet, which is a crazy thing to say. It's such a simple idea; sometimes I feel a little insecure about it. Like someone's going to come out and tell me this was already done. But I've loved it.
R: How have you procured what you have, and how are you going to get the rest?
DP: At first, I thought I’d just pull one from every [tournament]. Then I realized that in different rounds, she wore different outfits, but it's still on the same palette. It was doing a disservice to not include round one versus the finals, so it started to expand. And, in the end, it's a finite data set. Of course, it's a lot—800 plus—but we can technically find everything she wore because it's not ongoing [correction: it is now, once again, ongoing—Ed.].
So I figured I might as well do the full archive. From there I did start to populate from magazine coverage, but it wasn't giving me round-by-round information. I’ve found that Getty Images has a lot more. And I have a submission link on the page for anyone that has a certain picture for a missing block. Please submit it! I will give you credit for it!
R: You gotta think once [Serena] finds out about it, she'll be offering up all the other pictures.
DP: That would be my dream: if one day in the submission link I get this huge dump of high quality photos!
