FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. — Naomi Osaka walked on to Louis Armstrong Stadium and sparkled under the lights, with red roses on a hairpiece and a red jacket and dress studded with crystals. The four-time Grand Slam champion’s night-session outfit for the 2025 U.S. Open sent out a spectacular fashion statement, and its design, conception and production were years in the making.

“It was really elaborate, because the crystals are really hard to do on a performance outfit,” she said after her first-round win over Greet Minnen, which debuted the look.

Two days later, Osaka wore her day outfit, bright purple and also covered in crystals. As in the night session, she paired it with a crystal-encrusted Labubu doll, the wearable plush toy with a devilish grin that has become a fashion accessory for athletes and pop culture figures across the world.

The night before Osaka’s walk-on, 2006 U.S. Open champion Maria Sharapova appeared on Arthur Ashe Stadium wearing an updated version of the black, Audrey Hepburn-inspired dress — also sewn in with crystals — that she wore en route to the title 19 years ago. The tournament honored Sharapova with a special ring to mark her induction into the Tennis Hall of Fame, and if the sport had a fashion equivalent, she would be first ballot.

Sharapova, along with the Williams sisters, was at the vanguard of turning the relationship between fashion and tennis into a dialogue. Players have long been synonymous with certain kits, from Björn Borg’s Fila outfit and Serena Williams‘ catsuit to Roger Federer’s monogrammed blazers, and luxury brands have coveted its biggest stars as ambassadors, but the business of tennis and the business of fashion and beauty have never been as indivisible as they are now.

Not only are more stars signing more deals — Carlos Alcaraz with Louis Vuitton, Jannik Sinner with Gucci, Zheng Qinwen with Dior and Coco Gauff with Miu Miu via New Balance — but the interest in and economics of fashion have cascaded down the tours, bringing more exposure but also more complexity to a cocktail of financial oneupmanship, competing star power and exclusivity.

“I think we’re definitely at a moment where athletes are expressing their individuality through fashion,” said Joe Kudla, the founder and chief executive of Southern California athleisure brand Vuori, in a video interview last week.

Kudla says this from first-hand experience, having just signed Jack Draper, Britain’s world No. 5, after his Nike contract expired mid-season because of a renewal knock-on caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Such a marketable player leaving one of the sport’s behemoths for an up-and-coming brand from California is a symptom of that cascade, and of the relationship between sporting competition and marketing potential.

Two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships in tennis said that Draper’s headline sponsorship is worth around $5 million per year. Neither Vuori nor Draper’s representatives commented on specifics. Nike pays top dollar to its biggest names, but its payment structure can be based on performance, both in terms of results and reliability. Women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and men’s No. 1 and No. 2 Sinner and Alcaraz — the sporting duopoly that Draper will have to crack to win tennis’ biggest prizes — are among its prized assets.

Nike did not comment on their contracts, but a spokesperson said via email that it is “supporting the game at every level and partnering with some of the most iconic and talented players in the world”. The latter creates a density of interest in tennis and fashion — and a lot of sales power in replica outfits. It also creates a competitive environment that mirrors that of the tennis tours, in which up-and-coming stars can run into a sponsorship ceiling as well as a sporting one.

Some of those players, like Draper, would rather be the big fish in a smaller pond. Ben Shelton, who along with Iga Świątek and Joāo Fonseca, is signed up with the Federer-backed Swiss company On, said during an interview last year: “I didn’t want to be one of 50 Nike guys.”

“Will I be in advertising campaigns? Will I be on billboards? That’s a big consideration for players,” said one player representative, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships.

“And for a lot of them, the clothing deals are by far the most important of all their sponsorships.”

Frances Tiafoe, who moved to athletic apparel brand Lululemon when his Nike contract expired in January, had a similar motivation to Shelton: “Obviously I’d been with Nike for a lot of years,” he said in a news conference last week. “I wanted to go to the market to see what it was like. There’s a lot of interest for me in the market, and more than Nike did. Obviously, I had opportunities to be the face of a brand, which was a different mindset.

“I can build, and they can grow, and they can brand me. They are at their best at the highest level. Why not be the guy instead of one of them?

He added with a smile: “There are a couple decent guys, a couple decent athletes, that are over at Nike.”

Draper also wanted to be the guy with Vuori, saying in a news conference ahead of the U.S. Open that he was “blown away with the fact that they want me as kind of the face.

“To feel I’m not playing someone with the same kit is a bit of a different feeling sometimes.”

This is a common bugbear of fans and players, and another element of tennis fashion in which Sharapova was ahead of the curve. After doing so in a match at Wimbledon in the mid-2000s she spoke to Nike executives about it. “There was like, a conscious part of me that said, ‘Oh, if I do well and become a champion, I would love for that to never happen again,’” she told the New York Times last week.

Maria Sharapova’s 2006 U.S. Open outfit was a seminal moment in tennis fashion. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

The contrast in stature was evident when she won her first title in 2004. Sharapova took to the court in a white Nike outfit in the final; Serena Williams wore a custom, gold-accented dress by the same brand. But as the proliferation of sponsorships further down both tours, as the business of tennis grows ever richer and deeper, more and more matches across tournaments feature players taking to the court in identical kits with no identifying attributes.

Gauff joked on Thursday that when she was a kid visiting tennis events, “it was kind of looking like a cheerleading squad, everybody in one kit. Now I can see that they’re pushing more for that unique ability and (to) really capitalize off of that.”

For those players who are with Nike, getting to the point where you have a custom-made kit is a badge of honour. Sabalenka has graduated to that stage and said that she had some input into her U.S. Open kit.

Gauff is the highest-profile tennis player not with Nike — aside from Lacoste’s Novak Djokovic, who like Federer, set the trend in the 2010s by switching to high-street retailer Uniqlo. Djokovic generated his own stir on the opening night of this year’s U.S. Open, with an all-black ‘Darth Novak’ outfit. It drew comparisons with Federer’s monochrome New York kit from the 2007 tournament; Djokovic has worn all-black before in his career.

Gauff signed with New Balance when she was 14, and has since expanded her fashion footprint. Her custom-made leather jackets have been a hit since this year’s French Open, and her Miu Miu range is one of the most visible on-court luxury brand crossovers.

America’s male No. 1, Taylor Fritz, who wears Hugo Boss, said in a news conference after reaching the U.S. Open second round that: “I feel like every brand wants to do a tennis line, even brands that don’t necessarily sponsor tennis players — it’s just kind of become a popular thing, like the athleisure and sporty clothes in general.”

Fritz, who has modelled for Hermès at New York Fashion Week, added a couple of days earlier that: “In the future I’d love to do stuff like that again and walk in shows and stuff. It’s drawn me in. I just think that it’s something fun to do that I think suits me well, and it’s just different from what I normally do.”

The powers at the top of tennis are now making moves to capitalize on this interest. The ATP last week announced a collaboration with menswear label Palmes — the first for the tour with a non-tennis fashion apparel brand — and ahead of the U.S. Open set up styling suites with stylist Mobolaji Dawodu and photoshoots for five of its top-30 players (Frances Tiafoe, Flavio Cobolli, Alex de Minaur, Andrey Rublev and Holger Rune) as reported by Vogue.

The players were given outfits to wear for their pre-U.S. Open appearances from luxury brands like Ralph Lauren, Ferragamo and Issey Miyake, as well as Amiri, Officine Générale and Stone Island.

This is all part of a dedicated promotional strategy, explained the ATP’s SVP of marketing Andrew Walker. “Fashion is a big interest for a lot of our younger casual tennis fans,” he said in a phone interview Friday. “So we thought it made a ton of sense to try to lean into that in different ways that could draw a deeper connection between those kind of like-minded interests and at the same time support our players’ businesses and brands. Strengthening their personal brands through a connection to fashion.”

The ATP did not disclose how much its first round of investment into fashion cost, but Walker confirmed that the budget will be quadrupled next year. One aim is to develop an equivalent of the NBA tunnel walk, which has become a platform for players to express themselves through their fashion choices in their sport’s immediate environment but off the field of play or court.

The sociocultural breadth that fashion can bring to tennis also has an indirect impact on the sport’s on-court fortunes: It offers an on-ramp for casual fans, which can be made easy to access through social media and other promotion. This is true of the players’ outfits and brand sponsorships, but also of the more diffuse connection between tennis and fashion which manifests in trends like tenniscore and the growth in cultural cachet of the sport around crossover moments like the film “Challengers.”

Players have also forged their own paths when it comes to fashion. Federer and Andy Murray invested in their own clothing vehicles, On and Castore respectively, while at this year’s U.S. Open Taylor Townsend is designing her own kit. In Townsend’s case, the TT apparel brand that she’s trying to launch and is wearing at the U.S. Open came after eight years without a sponsor.

Townsend’s flame-print outfits caught eyes on her run to the fourth round, and her hope is to partner with a big apparel company that can bring it to retail, helping with manufacturing and distribution.

“Tennis is a unique sport in the sense the product you’re in for performance has more versatility into your everyday life. Tees and shorts and dresses and skirts, these are products that, that can be worn almost in the gym and out into your everyday life more so than like say a football kit or baseball or basketball uniforms,” said Kudla, whose Vuori brand also sponsors Marcos Giron, the world No. 55 and Southern California native.

“I think we obviously have our core of tennis fans, but I think fashion helps bring just casual fans to the sport, a new demographic,” Gauff said in a news conference last week.

“We don’t always need the core fans who know every single player. You look at NBA games, there’s so many people who go who don’t really know anything about basketball, other than players. And like for tennis, I think at U.S. Open we get that demographic of people, but I think more on a tour level, I would love to see that.”

She confirmed that she plans to do more tie-ups with Miu Miu, the last of which was at the Cincinnati Open. “I don’t think it’s been done too much to have a collaborative kit in tennis,” Gauff added. “To be one of the first is really cool. I hope more brands get involved with the sport.”

Players also genuinely believe that dressing the way they want can enhance performance. The immortal maxim from Deion Sanders, the only person to appear in both a Super Bowl and a World Series, goes thus: “If you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good. If you play good, they pay good.”

“For me, it’s like extra motivation. When I have a great kit, I want to do better to get the photos that I want,” Gauff said.

“Especially as a woman, I feel like when you feel good, and the fit is right, you feel really confident on the court and you’re not thinking about anything else but your game and things like that. Also, I think it just brings more fans to the sport.”

“Of course, man,” Tiafoe said of the link between looking good and performance. “You look good, you feel good, you play good. It’s really that simple, for sure. Hence why I’m wearing a hat and need a haircut, man.”

Frances Tiafoe has embraced being the lead tennis athlete at Lululemon, alongside Leylah Fernandez of Canada. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)

“It’s kind of part of it,” said Jessica Pegula, the American world No. 4 and one of the Adidas athletes this year wearing Y3, a collaboration with Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto.

“You’re entertaining at the end of the day and you want to look good and feel good and showcase your personality.”

“When I put on the outfit, it’s almost like a super suit, so I try to channel that,” Osaka said of her eye-catching outfits at last year’s U.S. Open.

Sports psychologist Marc Sagal, who has worked with tennis players, said via text message: “There’s actually some decent evidence for the ‘feel good, play good’ effect. The term is ‘enclothed cognition’ and it refers to the idea that what we wear can change how people and athletes think and perform.

“For tennis players, the right outfit can boost confidence and in a way help signal that it’s time to go into competitive mode. Tennis margins can be so thin that I believe they frequently get decided as much by psychology as physical skill or talent.”

Sagal added that the placebo effect plays a role, but added that “in tennis, confidence and focus are real things and when a player feels good about how they look, that psychological edge can be the difference maker.”

Osaka and Draper, the fashion headliners of this U.S. Open, have experienced contrasting on-court fortunes in New York, just days before the city’s Fashion Week. Osaka is into her first Grand Slam second week since 2021, while Draper, who came into the tournament carrying a left-arm injury, withdrew from his second-round match after making it through the opener.

When Osaka walks onto Arthur Ashe Stadium to face Gauff in a blockbuster match Monday afternoon, the eyes of the world will be on one of two of the biggest stars in tennis — and on their outfits.

“We don’t have a jersey, we don’t have a uniform. I think the possibilities on court are kind of endless,” Gauff said.

(Photo: Robert Prange / Getty Images)