Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Teams With Nicole Williams English on Exclusive Swimwear Collaboration
Model, entrepreneur, mother and designer Nicole Williams English is debuting an exclusive Nia Lynn by Nicole Williams English swimwear collection in collaboration with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit on Wednesday.
“My biggest dream and career goal was to be a Sports Illustrated rookie — my whole entire career I waited for this moment. Over 20 years — being a swimwear model and living in New York, that was my ultimate dream; it’s a huge accomplishment,” Williams English, one of this year’s rookies, told WWD. Since 2017, she has been running her exclusive swimwear label and has launched four collections in small, exclusive drops.
More from WWD
Upon receiving the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue rookie news, Williams English (who was pregnant at the time) proposed the idea of designing her own swimwear to wear on the Miami Swim Week runway last July, which Sports Illustrated accepted.
“I got to work on a suit and I only had four days to make it. I sketched the whole suit, designed it and actually took an old pattern from my first collection and tweaked it and added the rookie logo to it. It was the most popular suit of my first collection that everybody was just so obsessed with, so I brought it back in gold metallic and mesh with black letters with ‘rookie’ across the front. That’s where it all started,” Williams English said, adding she also revealed her pregnancy on the runway (and was later photographed for the 2023 editorial while seven months pregnant).
Following the event, where the Sports Illustrated team loved her rookie suit, Williams English designed a collaborative Nia Lynn x Sports Illustrated Swimsuit collection, which launches the same day as the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
“It’s been a real pinch-me moment because this is absolutely a dream come true to be able to combine my dream career path with my love for design,” she said.
“For this capsule, I wanted to just have totally new designs. I knew that I wanted to have a lot of sexy suits, because when you open the Sports Illustrated magazines — the suits that the girls have on always have a ‘wow’ factor about them,” Williams English said of her inspiration for the collection’s one-pieces, cutout and gold hardware details, and custom prints. The 12-piece collaborative collection includes a range of string bikinis, a G-string and strapless bandeaus in traditional swimwear and new seersucker fabrications, as well as three vintage Body Glove-inspired, metallic maillots boasting the Sports Illustrated logo.
The collection, priced $72 to $152, is available to shop exclusively on the swimwear brand’s e-commerce, as well as on Instagram.
Best of WWD
