Rachel Johnson: My name is Rachel Johnson.
I am a celebrity wardrobe stylist
and the CEO and president of the Thomas Faison Agency.
Narrator: Throughout her career,
Rachel Johnson has turned all-star athletes
into fashion superstars.
She's styled household names
like LeBron James, Victor Cruz,
Cam Newton, and Amar'e Stoudemire,
and she's widely credited
with making over the NBA.
Cam Newton: Watching basketball games,
you get a different idea
when you start seeing just as many cameras
covering the post game as the walkup
as vice versa for any other sport, too.
Narrator: But before she connected
the fashion world with the sports world,
Johnson pursued a degree in education.
Johnson: I was two years into getting my degree
to teach high school English
when I met a gentleman named Groovy Lou
who worked for P. Diddy,
and he told me that there were black women
who were responsible for creating images
for celebrities.
So, as soon as Groovy told me that
this could be a viable career path for me,
I knew that that's what I wanted to do.
Narrator: After college,
she worked for Essence Magazine
then moved into styling musicians
and eventually met Jalen Rose.
Johnson: So Jalen
was my first entry into the athlete world,
and it was a beautiful way to enter the business
because I was able to understand
the mentality of an athlete.
So the very next athlete
I started working with was LeBron James,
and I met him through Jay-Z,
and working with LeBron is what really helped
to completely change the way that the NBA dresses.
I knew that in order for LeBron to be respected
from a style standpoint,
that he needed to be wearing recognizable, historic brands.
Coming from a fashion standpoint
where they just didn't understand men of this stature,
they didn't understand necessarily the athletic world,
I had to bring these two worlds together
in a way that both of them could understand
each other's language.
So my goal was to bring him to these fashion houses
and have looks created for him
so that when he had press opportunities
and opportunities to be in front of the camera,
he was wearing what any other
well-dressed actor would be wearing.
Narrator: James became a global superstar.
His exposure and Johnson's influence
eventually permeated throughout the rest of the NBA,
but Johnson's work didn't stop there.
Johnson: I had been going to Europe.
I had been going to Paris and Milan to attend fashion shows,
and when I was there,
I realized there was a huge gap.
There was a huge opportunity there
for my clients, for athletes,
for black men in particular to attend these shows
because there was absolutely no diversity present at all.
Victor was my first client
who was brave enough to attack the European market.
Narrator: And Johnson and Cruz succeeded.
Cruz became the face of Givenchy's
fall and winter 2015 campaign.
Johnson: On a day-to-day basis,
my goals are to help build relationships
with my clients and fashion brands,
and once I figure out where it is
that they want to be placed
and how they want to be perceived by the public,
that gives me the insight that I need
to understand what brands I should connect them with,
which events they should be attending,
and then obviously what they're wearing.
Victor Cruz: I call her my fairy fashion godmother
because whenever I have a question or a debate
about what I want to wear,
how I want to wear it,
I'll ask her.
Narrator: Her work continues to break down barriers
and spread throughout popular culture.
Newton: For so long, the football player stigma
has been this big, strong, masculine guy
who may not have any style.
All he just wants to do is just hit somebody,
but now it's just a different demographic
of how people approach athleticism in different ways.
Johnson: So these last 10 years of focusing on athletes
and really bringing the two worlds
of fashion and athletes together has been
to heighten the awareness of fashion designers and brands,
to help them be more inclusive
and create sizes that are available for everyone.
Cruz: DeAndre Hopkins, obviously,
Odell Beckham Jr.,
you've got different guys
that probably wouldn't get the notoriety for their fashion
five to six, seven years ago,
and now they're getting those accolades.
They're getting that attention,
and they're getting the respect that they deserve,
but it's definitely evolved
even from the time that I met Rachel
all the way to now.
Johnson: There are men who may have
not necessarily felt comfortable wearing
what's coming down the runway
if they see a waif-y model wearing it,
but a regular 9-to-5 businessman
can look at what a LeBron James or Russell Westbrook
or Victor Cruz is wearing
and say, 'You know what?
Maybe I can do that, too
because he's more like me.'
And so, all of these stereotypes,
I think from a fashion perspective,
were broken down for men,
and it just opened things up
to make everything about men's fashion
become more accessible.
They've made it OK to try things
that you've never tried before,
and that's a very cool thing.