Key Takeaways
- Venus Williams teamed with Crate & Barrel on home and kids’ collections that merge her tennis legacy with 24 years of experience leading V. Starr Interiors.
- The main line channels Italian midcentury modern design through rounded furniture, muted colors, marble accents, and subtle tennis references like pleated lampshades and cable-knit throws.
- Crate & Kids makes the sport more explicit with racket-shaped mirrors, “LOVE” pillows, and tennis-court quilts inspired by the kind of room Williams says she would have loved as a child.
Venus Williams is bringing tennis home—literally.
The seven-time Grand Slam singles champion has teamed with Crate & Barrel for her first collection with the retailer, creating two lines that pull from both sides of her life: more than three decades in professional tennis and nearly as long working in interior design. The collaboration includes a sophisticated Crate & Barrel range influenced by Williams’ love of Italian midcentury modern design and a playful Crate & Kids collection packed with clever nods to the sport that made her famous.
Williams may be best known for what she can do with a racket, but interior design isn't a new side hustle. She founded V. Starr Interiors in 2002 while ranked No. 2 in the world, and the firm has now been operating for 24 years.
She approached her latest project with a familiar work ethic.
“With hard work, blood, sweat and tears,” Williams told Elle Decor of creating the collection. “If you don’t put in that work, you don’t get anywhere. When you’re going to sleep, you’re seeing designs in your head, and that’s when the magic happens.”
For the main Crate & Barrel collection, Williams looked to Italy. Rounded furniture arrives in muted olives, creams, and what she calls a “desert rose” shade, while marble accessories, pottery, and other pieces take cues from European hotels and vintage markets.
“My favorite style is midcentury modern Italian design,” Williams said. “I love Milan, and we did a lot of research there.”
Then there's the tennis.
Williams didn't simply slap rackets on everything and call it a collection. Pleated lampshades subtly reference tennis skirts, cable-knit throws evoke classic tennis sweaters, and the Hopper Lamp stacks rounded forms resembling tennis balls. Eggplant and forest-green pieces also nod toward Wimbledon, which Williams called “a favorite, definitely.”
Crate & Kids turns those references up considerably. The children's collection includes racket-shaped mirrors, “LOVE” pillows and quilts designed to resemble tennis courts.
It's also considerably more personal.
“It’s the kind of room I would have loved as a kid,” Williams said.
The launch comes during a period when Williams' influence on tennis is being celebrated well beyond tournament results. In August 2025, Mattel released a Venus Williams Inspiring Women Barbie modeled after the all-white Reebok look she wore while winning Wimbledon in 2007.
Williams had spent years advocating for equal prize money, and the 2007 tournament became the first Wimbledon at which women and men received equal purses.
Williams has also remained active in the sport itself. This summer, she returned to Wimbledon, including a planned doubles reunion with Serena Williams that was ultimately scrapped after Serena injured her knee.
The sisters later competed together at the U.S. Open, where Venus was simultaneously discussing furniture design from inside the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
For Williams, that's less of a pivot than a collision of two careers she's been building for decades.
“There’s a lot of tennis there,” she said of the collection. “I think it comes across in a very chic, and cool way. I had to bring my life into the collection.”
