Gabrielle Union Is The Fashion Fan Girl You’d Expect

The past few years have been a steady fashionable climb for Gabrielle Union. But recently, she and her husband, Chicago Bulls basketball player Dwyane Wade, just returned from the #WadeWorldTour — i.e. their summer vacation — that took them from Italy to France. While the Being Mary Jane actress usually does no wrong (she really just refuses to age), the couple doubled-down on their fashion with a capital F as they posed during Men’s Paris Fashion Week. And her stylist Thomas Christos's prowess played a starring role.

“I’ve been working with [Gabrielle] for about two and a half years,” Christos told Refinery29. “Because she has such a great body and she’s so beautiful, it’s easy to put her in something hot and say ‘Great, you look amazing.’ It’s hard for her to not look amazing. So when we started working together, I was like 'Okay, I would love to just push it a little bit.'’’

While it feels like there was a definite push in Union's style in the last few weeks, it wasn’t a strategic move on either of their parts. “We didn’t have a talk,” he said. "We’re always trying to change it up. She doesn’t like to wear the same brands over and over.” Turns out, the 44-year-old is just like the rest of us, and that comes to social media too — she gets inspiration from Instagram. Union will screenshot “images of street style or just people she loves for their inherent dopeness, like Kahlana Barfield and Luka Sabbat. She’ll be like, 'I was waiting on set and went into an Instagram vortex.' It makes it so fun.”

The infamous #WadeWorldTour was a collaborative effort between Union and Christos. “I pulled some of the looks and she found the rest. She has her favorite stores in Miami that she shops in, like En Avance,” he explained. But with Paris, “it all was quite different because each designer is quite different and has their own sensibility and we tried to tap into that,” Christos revealed. Union "loved the men's tracksuits at Valentino and always loves Dion Lee's silhouettes and use of color. Oh, and she's never met a Stella McCartney trouser she didn't love.” She also manages to to add personal touches to every designer ensemble: “For her Thom Browne look, I actually pushed for a different non-Thom Browne shoe that was a bit more lady, but she was pretty passionate about the boot. She's a fashion boy's dream.”

On the right, click through Union’s best looks from her time on the #WadeWorldTour.