How Fashion Is Becoming The Gateway Drug To Formula One
It's becoming fashionable to care about F1 - and despite what some might say, that's a good thing.
Not all race fans are the same. And they’ll be quick to tell you that. There are Formula 1 fans who have been watching the race with their dads since they were infants. There are fans who started in other motorsports and eventually crossed over to F1. There are fans who learn with their partners, and a large number of new fans have emerged from the Netflix series Drive to Survive.
But there’s a new fan in town, one that is attracting attention and changing the sport into something new and sexy, something classy and sophisticated. It’s the fashion fan.
She doesn’t just show up for the race. She shows up in Alaïa, in Aritzia, in oversized sunglasses and a ponytail you can only achieve with a Dyson Airwrap and two hours of dedication. She might not have every team principal’s name memorised, but she knows that a Ferrari-red blazer is this season’s hottest shade. She knows what a paddock pass is and how to dress for it—whether or not she’s actually holding one. More importantly, she’s made Formula 1 aspirational for an entirely new audience.
The F1 fashion girlie isn’t just a byproduct of Instagram algorithms or PR stunts. She’s a catalyst that’s rebranding the sport from the inside out, whether die-hard fans like it or not. And let’s be honest, many don’t. For every enthusiastic newcomer in a Reiss x McLaren shirt, there’s a guy in her replies asking if she can name three drivers—as if being stylish and informed are mutually exclusive.
Here’s the thing: fashion has always been about codes, insider knowledge, and signalling belonging. So has F1. The difference is that fashion is making the sport feel accessible in a way the stats never could. It invited women, specifically young women, into a world they were previously told wasn’t for them. And it did so with leather boots, perfect nails, and a #F1OOTD.
The Paddock is the New Runway
You don’t have to know your downforce from your drag coefficient to realise the paddock has turned into a fashion week, but with more engine noise. From Alexandra Saint Mleux (Charles Leclerc’s girlfriend) in Meshki to Zhou Guanyu showing up in Dior suits that somehow make tire smoke look like a runway backdrop, the fashion stakes have never been higher. Even WAGs are no longer just silent arm candy; instead, they’re ambassadors, influencers, and stylists in their own right.
And then there’s the merch. If you still think team apparel is just cheap polyester shirts and dad hats, you haven’t seen the designers creating for teams. These aren’t souvenirs—they’re style statements. Black McLaren varsity jackets? Instant add-to-cart. Bucket hats in Alpine blue? Must-have. F1 teams have stopped designing merch and started designing wardrobes. The fans? They’re eating it up.
It’s not just what’s worn inside the paddock either; it’s what people wear to the grandstands, the airport, and brunch. TikTok videos tagged with “F1 + Fashion” show fans in $30 Zara moto jackets, vintage race suits, custom team scarves, and handmade jewellery. There’s a sense of DIY pride mixed with luxury envy—a fashion democracy where you can cosplay as a paddock regular without having a trust fund or even knowing where Monaco is on a map.
Style as a Learning Curve
Here’s what a lot of legacy fans miss when they complain about the rise of fashion-forward F1 content: for many women, fashion isn’t superficial but a form of literacy. A visual language or a way of reading a room you’ve never been invited into but want to belong to. For decades, the average F1 fan was assumed to be a certain type of person—probably male, probably into engines, probably wearing cargo shorts and armed with trivia. If you weren’t that, you were expected to stay quiet and let the “real” fans talk.
Fashion gives people a way to participate; it gives us a role in the story. You might not be ready to break down a three-stop strategy yet, but you can decode Lewis Hamilton’s paddock outfit like it’s a thesis in personal branding. You might not know what a power unit is, but you’ve clocked that Lando Norris’s off-track style is somewhere between gamer boyfriend and Scandinavian streetwear. Fashion becomes the gateway, the warm-up, the part of the sport where new fans feel comfortable, competent, and seen.
This isn’t hypothetical—it’s personal. I make F1 content meant to explain the technical parts of the sport in ways that are relatable, digestible, and yes, sometimes sparkly. I use props like nail polish bottles. I wear bows in my hair. I joke. I do this because I know how intimidating F1 can feel when you're just starting out. But I also know what it’s like to get excited about something only to be met with gatekeeping and condescension. I’ve seen firsthand how fashion opens the door for fans who otherwise wouldn’t have knocked.
The New Cool-Girl Fan
The “fashion fan” isn’t just a passing trend; she’s reshaping what F1 fandom looks like. She’s wearing Grand Prix-coded outfits to brunch. She’s designing race-day Pinterest boards. She’s spending her money on Alpine-inspired athleisure and LN4 hoodies, then using her TikTok to make race predictions—while doing a GRWM. She’s a walking contradiction to the tired stereotype that women are only here for the “cute drivers.” She’s here because it’s fun, because it’s fast, because it’s stylish, and because she wants to be.
Yet this fan is still treated with suspicion. Her knowledge is constantly questioned, her outfits ridiculed, and her presence policed—as if the very act of being visible in this space makes her a threat. What people don’t realise is that she’s growing the sport. She’s the reason brands like LVMH are investing, why races are trending, and why the paddock now doubles as a photo backdrop. She’s not faking it; she’s reshaping it. Drawing in fans who connect first through aesthetic and energy, not engineering specs. She’s proof that passion doesn’t need a traditional entry point to be real.
F1 as Lifestyle, Not Just Sport
What fashion has done, perhaps better than any marketing campaign or Netflix show, is reframe F1 not just as a sport but as a lifestyle. A luxury-coded, aspirational, jet-setting fever dream that you could emulate, even if your budget is more Zara than Zegna. It’s no longer just about watching the race; it’s about curating your own version of the experience.
This rebrand matters. It brings in people who don’t usually feel welcome in sports culture. It lets fans lead with curiosity, not credentials. It gives women the chance to enter on their own terms—and then learn everything they need. The soft entry becomes a full-blown obsession. The outfit leads to meeting other F1 fans, which leads to listening to a podcast. The podcast leads to watching qualifying at 7am in your pyjamas, and defending your favourite driver on Discord like it’s a second job.
Fashion doesn’t dumb down the sport; it gives it dimension, texture, and colour. It takes a world once defined by hard data and harder-to-pronounce track names and makes it feel human, emotional, and alive.
How Brands and Teams Are Capitalising on Fashion’s Influence
Fashion might have opened the door for new fans, but the teams have now started rolling out the welcome mat.
Formula 1 teams used to look like walking billboards—but now they dress like someone curated a Pinterest mood board. McLaren’s sleek varsity jackets (shout out to their collab with Reiss) look like something you’d see in a SoHo coffee shop, not just Silverstone. Haas x Palm Angels dropped merchandise that sold out so quickly, it barely hit the shelves. Even Ferrari—the most legendary of legacy brands—is reimagining its off-track presence with capsule collections balancing Scuderia red and streetwear edge. What was once just “team gear” is now real fashion—runway fashion, your-size-sold-out-in-twelve-minutes fashion.
It’s not just the teams. The drivers have become full-blown style icons—sometimes accidentally, sometimes strategically. Lewis Hamilton’s pre-race walks are part fashion show, part protest, part brand deal, and part statement on masculinity. Zhou Guanyu’s personal style has drawn attention from Dior, and he wears the partnership like a second skin—equal parts Shanghai cool and European tailoring. Then there’s Lando Norris, whose LN4 merch fuses gaming culture, racing, and laid-back cool, making his fans feel like they’re part of a club.
Brands are watching. They’re not just sponsoring cars anymore; they’re dressing people. They’re tapping into the aspirational side of F1 fandom and creating “race-day adjacent” fashion clothing that lets you feel like you belong in the grandstand or the group chat without memorising sector times. Athleisure lines now reference Monaco as a mood, not a location. You’ll find bucket hats inspired by pit crews, earrings shaped like tire guns, and faux team shirts that turn the paddock into a runway, even if you’re watching from your couch.
Most importantly, fans are buying it, not just the products but the idea. The idea that this sport can be something beautiful, expressive, aesthetic, and feminine. You can love high-speed data engineering and a colour-coordinated capsule wardrobe.
Fashion has given F1 a cultural refresh. It’s made teams reconsider how they present themselves. It’s made partnerships less about logos and more about identity. It’s made being an F1 fan—especially for women—feel not just possible but aspirational.
Reclaiming Space: How Women Are Changing Motorsport Culture Through Fashion
There’s a reason the fashion fan gets under people’s skin.
To some longtime viewers who treat F1 like an exclusive club, those who show up in crop tops and heeled boots feel like tourists. “They’re just here for the outfits,” they grumble, clutching their lap-time spreadsheets. And you know what? Sometimes, they are. But that’s not only okay—it’s a shift the sport desperately needed.
Fashion is the tool, but the larger goal is visibility.
For decades, motorsport was marketed almost exclusively to men. The only women visible at the track were grid girls or pitlane wives—rarely shown as engineers, strategists, or, god forbid, fans with opinions. The emergence of fashion-forward F1 content creators—many of them women—has completely disrupted that narrative. They aren’t just consuming the sport; they’re building culture around it. They’re translating tire strategy into TikToks and making the garage aesthetic aspirational.
And yes, they’re doing it while looking phenomenal.
There’s power in that. Showing up styled and informed in a historically male-dominated space is a bold move. For many women, dressing well for a race isn’t just about Instagram. It’s a form of protection—a suit of armour made of linen trousers and Chanel sandals. It’s a way to signal: I belong here.
Fashion has become both the gateway and the defence mechanism.
Online, backlash is always loudest when women are visible. “Name three drivers,” is the digital eye-roll thrown at anyone who looks like they care more about outfits than overtakes. That demand for gatekeeping is, in reality, a fear of change. If you peel back the misogyny, you find a sport being reshaped in real time, and fashion is one of the tools doing the heavy lifting.
More importantly, fashion-forward fans are educating. Creators like Lissie Mackintosh post grid predictions in the same breath as styling haul videos. They break down practice sessions and discuss tire deg in between GRWM clips. They’re redefining what it looks like to know your stuff—no cargo shorts required.
In this new era, fandom doesn’t have to perform masculinity to be taken seriously. It doesn’t have to dress down to look credible. If anything, it’s dressing up—and refusing to apologise for it.
 | A guest post by
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