Asia Muhammad is among the most fashionable professional tennis players on the Hologic WTA Tour, both on and off the court. Her love of tennis and fashion intersected the day a 13-year-old girl saw Serena Williams wearing a short, pleated denim skirt, modified to meet the specifications of this strenuous game.
“Serena’s outfit — at the 2004 US Open — I loved that so much,” Muhammad said. “I made my parents go out and buy it for me immediately. It was in the Niketown store inside Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. That’s what drew me into the fashion side.”
Years later, Muhammad, 31, now has an outlet for her two passions. It’s a tennis apparel company, co-founded with good friend Kimberly Yee, called Lemonsnlaundry. There’s a nifty backstory.
Yee’s father, Adam, grew up in the back of a Detroit laundromat run by his parents.
“This was a unique way of honoring him — he taught me tennis,” said Yee, who played at Stanford University from 2015-19. “It goes along with the idea of turning lemons into lemonade, a play on that phrase. I also like the alliteration.
“We just decided to make women’s tennis apparel that people would actually like to wear.”
Certainly, Muhammad likes the clothes, which she wears as she and doubles partner Ena Shibahara aim to position themselves for a spot at the year-end WTA Finals in Fort Worth. Sitting in a small interview room at the media center at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at the US Open earlier this month, she explained how it all came together.
“Kimmy and I met at the No Quit Academy, a youth foundation in Vegas, where her dad worked,” Muhammad said. “We had talked about it over the years, and finally did it a year and a half ago. She’s from Vegas, too, and we wanted it to be a female-run, design-created thing, which was really fun. The clothes aren’t cool in a lot of other female sports, except for maybe volleyball; like in basketball you get the really long shorts. That wasn’t really my vibe.”
We mean business
“My part is being the designer, and doing social media. I obviously wear it and I help pick out the stuff. She’s kind of more behind the scenes, logistics and such.”
Muhammad knew what she liked, got her visions down on paper and Yee helped them come into being. Yee lives in Los Angeles, a fashion and design hub, since she graduated and lined up the sourcing, the fabric and manufacturing details. Some of the apparel is…