Ashley Greene posted a set of pictures to Instagram and Threads of herself on a sunlit square of concrete, holding a Spalding basketball in a black bandeau and oversized grey trousers with poppers running down the outside seam, worn unfastened over the leg. The caption was six words and a wink: 'Who says vampires only play baseball.. ;)'
Two separate revivals are stacked in that one picture, and readers clocked both at once. 'It's giving Baby One More Time video meets Twilight,' ran a reply that collected more approval than most others on the post, catching a 1998 music video and a 2008 film in the same breath.
The Trousers Are Doing Numbers
The clothes are the better documented half of it. Pinterest's summer trend report for this year put searches for 'baddie tracksuit outfit' up 276% and '90s minimalist style' up 698%, with 'y2k tracksuit bottoms outfit' and 'tracksuit bottoms with heels' both up 35%. The report tracks the tracksuit revival broadly rather than the tearaway silhouette Greene has on, but hers is the same lineage. The bandeau has been having its own year quite separately, written up across the fashion press as a 2026 staple.
The Joke She Actually Made
The caption is sharper than it first looks, especially. Greene played Alice Cullen across all five Twilight films, and in the 2008 original she is the pitcher in the baseball sequence, the one the Cullens can only play during a thunderstorm because the noise they make needs covering. This also became an iconic scene in the film that had Muse's 'Supermassive Black Hole' running in the background.
Director Catherine Hardwicke remembered that Greene 'had to look like she was a damn good pitcher, and that's not that easy.' Hardwicke also recalled Greene watching and continuing to try until her stunt double pitched in a way that 'just clicked.' Greene's response was: 'I get it. That's where I need the weight, the arms.'
Fans Took It Literally
The replies largely ignored the clothes and went for the premise. 'Honestly aging like a vampire,' read one of the best-received, and others ran with it. 'You could of kept going as a vampire honestly. Because you have not aged a day,' one wrote. Another checked the lore and found a hole in it: 'You are not a vampire, otherwise you would be bursting into flames sitting in the sunlight!'
Greene is 39 and was 21 when the first film opened in November 2008, which is the arithmetic driving all of it. The rest of the thread worried about structural damage instead. 'The concrete getting cracked every time someone dribbles,' one reader offered, while another asked whether a dunk from her would count as an earthquake.
One reply went somewhere else entirely, from someone who had 'just now found out what Alice looks like, not as Alice.' The character wore a cropped black bob and heavy pale makeup across all five films.
None of it is landing in a vacuum. Netflix has ordered an animated series based on Stephenie Meyer's Midnight Sun, with Lionsgate Television producing. The novel retells the original story from Edward Cullen's perspective, rather than simply adapting the films. The first Twilight film turns 18 later this month. Greene was the one who brought up vampires.
