Golden State Valkyries forward Gabby Williams was supposed to be off for two days when she got called into the gym. “I was like, What do they want me to come to the gym for?”
Valkyries guard Kaitlyn Chen and general manager Ohemaa Nyanin were waiting to greet Williams with exciting news: she had made the 2026 WNBA All-Star team. Williams’s first thought? “I couldn’t wait to tell the whole team because I felt like it’s something that isn’t just my accomplishment,” she says. “I was able to get there because of them.”
All-Star Weekend was something of a homecoming for Williams, who used to play for the Chicago Sky. In a perfect world, Williams and her partner, New York Liberty guard Marine Johannès, would have stopped by the city’s F1 arcade. But realistically, she knew she wouldn’t have much free time. Still, “I hope that I can go out by the water, maybe go on a rooftop, at least just have the nice, famous Chicago views,” she says.
The first stop for the weekend, however, was the orange carpet. Williams prefers to do her own makeup for events. On game days, she likes to lay out her tunnel ’fit before she takes a nap to recharge. But this calls for a slight diversion in her pre-game routine. “Maybe [I’ll have] wine because I’m going to be nervous,” she says. A good playlist also helps her get into the zone: “Steve Lacy just dropped his new album. I’ve been listening to that a lot,” she says. Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and Madonna’s Confessions II are also queued up.
As for her look, Williams turned to her stylist, Mariah Keopple—herself a professional hockey player. Williams chose to wear one of Keopple’s own pieces for the orange carpet, a black resin corset and a high-waisted skirt with a dramatic, billowing train.
“A lot of her pieces were for athletes—bigger shoulders, littler waists, muscular legs—and she’s found a way to find what goes well with these body types. It’s nice because she can try it on because our bodies are so similar, which is very rare,” Williams says. “She’s like, ‘This is how it looks on me. I think it’ll look like this on you.’”
Below, the Golden State Valkyries’ Gabby Williams brings Vogue along as she gets ready for the 2026 WNBA All-Star Weekend.
