Model, entrepreneur, mother and designer Nicole Williams English is debuting an exclusive Nia Lynn by Nicole Williams English swimwear collection in collaboration with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit on Wednesday.

“My biggest dream and profession goal was to be a Sports Illustrated rookie — my whole entire profession I waited for this moment. Over 20 years — being a swimwear model and living in Recent York, that was my ultimate dream; it’s an enormous accomplishment,” Williams English, one in all this 12 months’s rookies, told WWD. Since 2017, she has been running her exclusive swimwear label and has launched 4 collections in small, exclusive drops.  

Upon receiving the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue rookie news, Williams English (who was pregnant on the time) proposed the concept of designing her own swimwear to wear on the Miami Swim Week runway last July, which Sports Illustrated accepted. 

“I started working on a suit and I only had 4 days to make it. I sketched the entire suit, designed it and truly took an old pattern from my first collection and tweaked it and added the rookie logo to it. It was the preferred suit of my first collection that everyone was just so obsessive about, so I brought it back in gold metallic and mesh with black letters with ‘rookie’ across the front. That’s where it began,” Williams English said, adding she also revealed her pregnancy on the runway (and was later photographed for the 2023 editorial while seven months pregnant).

Following the event, where the Sports Illustrated team loved her rookie suit, Williams English designed a collaborative Nia Lynn x Sports Illustrated Swimsuit collection, which launches the identical day because the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

“It’s been an actual pinch-me moment because this is totally a dream come true to find a way to mix my dream profession path with my love for design,” she said. 

“For this capsule, I wanted to only have totally latest designs. I knew that I desired to have lots of sexy suits, because whenever you open the Sports Illustrated magazines — the suits that the women have on at all times have a ‘wow’ factor about them,” Williams English said of her inspiration for the gathering’s one-pieces, cutout and gold hardware details, and custom prints. The 12-piece collaborative collection includes a spread of string bikinis, a G-string and strapless bandeaus in traditional swimwear and latest seersucker fabrications, in addition to three vintage Body Glove-inspired, metallic maillots boasting the Sports Illustrated logo.

The gathering, priced $72 to $152, is accessible to buy exclusively on the swimwear brand’s e-commerce, in addition to on Instagram.