“I’m an extroverted introvert, and when I enter spaces like that, I think the Bahamian in me—the Caribbean girl in me—comes out a little bit and I can move through those spaces as myself,” Jones explains after recalling a casual conversation she had with Vogue’s Anna Wintour about the behind-the-scenes logistics of planning such an extravagant event. “I let my culture, I let all of the pieces of me, just shine through, and I think that’s what happened.”
Whether she’s wearing a black Sergio Hudson blazer to the Met Gala or wearing a pink suit and sneakers, Jones’s self-proclaimed masculine style has become an important facet of her identity as a Black lesbian who grew up in the Bahamas.
“We were the family that went to church every Sunday, and I was wearing dresses and frilly socks,” she explains, saying she felt there were many rules about how a “lady” was supposed to present, but the same kind of restrictions never applied to men.
“I always felt like, Why do I have to follow these rules? Why do I have to clean the house all day with my sisters, and my brother is able to just be outside or just throw the trash out and then he’s free for the rest of the day?” she says. “I always just felt some type of way about the stereotypes or the roles that Bahamian society, or society in general, was putting on women. I felt like they just wanted us to be less free.”
She continues, “And so for me, I just felt like the clothing that I was wearing represented finding my freedom.”
Jones moved to the States when she was 13 years old, living with strangers in Maryland before she was taken in by her high school basketball coach. “Now I call her my second mom, and she’s someone that I go to for advice and is really there for me and in my corner,” she says of Diane Richardson. “Now she’s the head coach at Temple University, and Philly is not that far of a drive from New York, so she’s always up here watching games and showing love and support.”
Jones was drafted to the WNBA in 2016, spending her first seven years in the league with the Connecticut Sun before being traded to the New York Liberty in 2023, so she’s seen the exponential growth of the league first-hand. “My first, what, four years in the league, I had a roommate,” she says. “We are staying at nicer hotels, and now we don’t fly commercial anymore; we’re flying p