On Saturday (Sept 5), as the crowd waited for Naomi Osaka to walk out for her third-round match in the US Open, the cheers began long before she even emerged from the tunnel.
Attendees had been thrumming with anticipation: not just about how each competition will go, but about what Osaka would wear.
No one has done more to change the game of tennis fashion this year than Osaka.
At every Grand Slam she has raised the bar, and at the Open, the last major tournament of the year, it had become clear that this time around she was offering something of a grand finale.
Osaka wasn’t just unveiling a unique on-court Nike-designed look, as she, and tennis stars like Maria Sharapova and Serena and Venus Williams, had done before.
She wasn’t just wearing a startling walk-on look that was more runway than court, as athletes do in basketball and football.
She was wearing a veritable collection created by multiple designers. One that honoured both New York fashion and the sports stars who preceded her.
Coming just days before the start of New York Fashion Week, her entrances served as a curtain raiser for an entirely different kind of audience.
“I think we’re really coming into a tennis renaissance age where so many players are embracing fashion, and Osaka is at the forefront of that,” said Sunita Kumar Nair, the author of Ace: The Times & Style of Tennis.
The pageantry began during Osaka’s pretournament practices at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, when she paid homage to a famous 2003 photograph of Anna Kournikova arriving at the tennis complex wearing a minidress and Valentino heels and carrying a Vuitton bag.
Only she raised it one, making every arrival a fashion moment even before the Open began.
Practice on day one was a diaphanous tangerine miniskirt and strapless top; day two, a draped caramel mini; day three, a ruched turquoise number, and so on.
And it really came into focus at the tournament, when Osaka decided for the first time to wear three designer looks, one for each of her possible early match entrances – all inspired by basketball player Allen Iverson to match the basketball theme of Nike’s US Open kit – and had enlisted “image architect” Law Roach to help realise her plans.
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The first look: an asymmetrical grey hoodie from Who Decides War, the sleeves cut off and one side of the hem stretching to the ankle, atop a wedding-cake-like white tulle skirt.
The second one: a sheer Thom Browne jacket embroidered with little silver rackets atop a long pleated skirt open at the front, so it appeared like a train (with matching looks worn by her mom and publicist, as well as other members of her support team).
The third one: grey suit jacket-sweatshirt hybrid over ultrawide pants made from Nike fleece.
And there may be more combinations of the pieces she has already worn if Osaka advances in the tournament.
Still, whatever happens with the trophy, one thing is clear: Osaka has permanently changed expectations around tennis and dress. Even if she didn’t mean to do that in the beginning, exactly.
Breaking the rules
Osaka’s fashion breakthrough, she said, was the Yoon Ahn Nike dress she wore to play in the US Open in 2024, at a time when she was struggling to return to tennis after the birth of her daughter.
The dress, inspired by Harajuku, featured assorted ruffles and bows.
Osaka, 28, grew up in New York and Florida, and her mother is Japanese. When Osaka visited Tokyo as a preteen, she was dazzled by the styles.
Before she wore it, she had been publicly defined largely by her four Grand Slam wins (including two US Open championships) and her willingness to discuss her struggles with mental health.
When she speaks, she is very deliberate, choosing her words with care. She rarely smiles in portraits. But with the “Lolita goth” dress, as she called it, and what came after, it was as if she had donned, literally, a different, more lively public persona.
“It’s given me an outlet to – I don’t want to say release the stress – but maybe have a different conversation and show people part of my life outside of tennis,” she said.
“I am a pretty private person,” Osaka continued. But when she puts on a new look, she said, “I feel like we’re all kind of exploring together. It’s not that I have multiple personalities, but every time I wear a different outfit, it’s like a different character, almost like a video game, where you can select different avatars.
"And for me, it always feels like whatever story we’re telling and whatever outfit I’m wearing, it’s like a different version of myself.”
By January 2026, Osaka was ready to try something bigger, taking a page from the tunnel walks that have become the norm in other sports – but raising them from the level of sportswear to evening wear.
She turned to young couturier Robert Wun, whose often fantastical work she had discovered on Instagram.
Still, when Osaka picked up his jellyfish-inspired parasol and hat before her match, she almost backed out.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m doing this,’” she said. “Then I remember walking on the court with my umbrella and hearing gasps. I always tell people I never hear anybody in the arena, but it was such an audible noise, it stuck with me.”
At this point, Thom Browne said, letting fashion speak for her is “one of her superpowers”.
It has the additional benefit, Nair added, of throwing some opponents off their game (at the French Open, Osaka’s first-round opponent criticised the “fashion show” going on beforehand).
“I think of a peacock, where they start showing their feathers to ward off predators,” Nair said.
Read more: Grand slams or grand entrances? Naomi Osaka changes the rules of tennis fashion
Tribute to hip-hop style
Osaka is no longer an ambassador for Louis Vuitton and so is free to work with any brand – as long as it can satisfy the time and logistic requirements of her job.
She has only minutes to take off her walk-on looks and start playing, so outfits need to be created with disrobing in mind.
After Wun came a sequined gold Germanier for the French Open in May and an all-white kimono by Hana Yagi for Wimbledon in June. Osaka discovers designers on Instagram, through stylist friends and by wandering into stores wherever she is playing.
When Nike told her its theme for the US Open, Osaka said, “I kind of sat with that for a while because, honestly, basketball doesn’t really mean much to me. But eventually I started thinking about players that have impacted the sport, and that, style-wise, have changed the game.”
That led her to Iverson, who brought hip-hop style to the NBA as a Philadelphia 76er.
“He’s shifted the way NBA players dress, and the whole conversation around clothes in sports, and expressing yourself through style,” Osaka said in a news conference before the Open (she was wearing an Iverson T-shirt at the time).
Now she is trying to do the same.
After she won her first match at the US Open, when she was fielding questions from the press about the surprisingly close match, she deftly used fashion to change the focus.
“I just get really nervous during the first round of this tournament, because I want to do well,” she said. “And I want to show you guys some more outfits.” – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
