Though Jonquel Jones never thought professional basketball would lead her to the Met Gala, she knew exactly how to make the biggest impact when she got there. At six-foot-six, the 31-year-old New York Liberty player is often the tallest person in the room—and she wanted to take up even more space during fashion’s biggest night.
“We felt like the hair being up was going to be a really big deal,” she says of the towering style by Kim Kimble, which was further emphasized with dangling pearls and crystals. “At first we entertained a high-bun type of situation, but I think as time went on, we wanted to be a little bit more dramatic and really just set the tone.”
Jones’s ultimate goal for the night, she tells me while undergoing treatment at the gym ahead of the playoffs, was to “move through that space like I belong, because I do.”
Of course she does. Just six months prior to the first Monday in May, Jones was crowned the 2025 Finals MVP, having played a crucial role in the New York Liberty’s championship victory only 10 miles away at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. But back to the Met Gala.
Emmie America“I’m an extroverted introvert, and when I enter spaces like that, I think the Bahamian in me—the Caribbean girl in me—comes out a little bit and I can move through those spaces as myself,” Jones explains after recalling a casual conversation she had with Vogue’s Anna Wintour about the behind-the-scenes logistics of planning such an extravagant event. “I let my culture, I let all of the pieces of me, just shine through, and I think that’s what happened.”
Whether she’s wearing a black Sergio Hudson blazer to the Met Gala or wearing a pink suit and sneakers, Jones’s self-proclaimed masculine style has become an important facet of her identity as a Black lesbian who grew up in the Bahamas.
“We were the family that went to church every Sunday, and I was wearing dresses and frilly socks,” she explains, saying she felt there were many rules about how a “lady” was supposed to present, but the same kind of restrictions never applied to men.
“I always felt like, Why do I have to follow these rules? Why do I have to clean the house all day with my sisters, and my brother is able to just be outside or just throw the trash out and then he’s free for the rest of the day?” she says. “I always just felt some type of way about the stereotypes or the roles that Bahamian society, or society in general, was putting on women. I felt like they just wanted us to be less free.”
She continues, “And so for me, I just felt like the clothing that I was wearing represented finding my freedom.”
Jones moved to the States when she was 13 years old, living with strangers in Maryland before she was taken in by her high school basketball coach. “Now I call her my second mom, and she’s someone that I go to for advice and is really there for me and in my corner,” she says of Diane Richardson. “Now she’s the head coach at Temple University, and Philly is not that far of a drive from New York, so she’s always up here watching games and showing love and support.”
Jones was drafted to the WNBA in 2016, spending her first seven years in the league with the Connecticut Sun before being traded to the New York Liberty in 2023, so she’s seen the exponential growth of the league first-hand. “My first, what, four years in the league, I had a roommate,” she says. “We are staying at nicer hotels, and now we don’t fly commercial anymore; we’re flying privately.”
And while Jones is one of the few players I’ve spoken with who enjoys playing overseas between seasons—“it’s really hard to prep for five-on-five basketball without playing five-on-five basketball”—she stands with the rest of the WNBA sisterhood in calling for higher compensation and better conditions, particularly when it comes to providing time for recovery between games.
“Gone are the times where people treat their WNBA teams like the stepchild or the stepkids,” she says. “The league is growing and moving in the right direction, and we need ownership and people that are aligned with that vision to continue to grow the sport and to give professional athletes what they deserve.”
If sports are a microcosm of society, the WNBA could be considered a reflection of what many women feel is part and parcel of simply existing in 2025: being underpaid, undervalued, and under-resourced, with many of these issues disproportionately affecting Black and LGBTQ+ women. Within the league, masc players of color have spoken out about feeling left out of sponsorship deals and granted less media attention than their white or straight counterparts.
In February 2022, Jones expressed frustration with the endorsement opportunities in the WNBA, noting that seats were “disappearing from the table” due to her personal identity. In October 2024, she told Complex she was still “fighting for those deals” but wasn’t sure if “opportunities are necessarily there for me by myself as a player” without the New York Liberty.
In August of that year, she collaborated with Nike on the KD 17 Bahamas, in celebration of her heritage. Now, she tells me, partnerships are coming in consistently and she feels like she’s finally being prioritized.
“When you come from a place where being yourself can be considered a bad thing, it feels really good to get validation from the world in general to really say, ‘No, it’s okay to live your truth. It’s okay to be who you are,’” Jones tells me. “Not just in the WNBA, but even just living in New York City. I see it everywhere. I see people being themselves and being genuinely happy and not feeling that they have to shy away from who they are.”
She continues, “All those things just remind me that all of my hard work, all of my effort, all those things aren’t being overlooked simply because I choose to love another woman, or I choose to wear a button-up shirt versus a dress.”
