Fashion has been all over Grand Slam tennis for a while, but we’ve hit critical mass with this year’s US Open, which runs from Aug. 24 to Sept. 7. It’s reminiscent of when every brand simultaneously discovered F1 a few years back, or the WNBA in 2024.
Here are a few reasons why this year feels particularly extra:
- For her return to professional tennis, 45-year-old Venus Williams wore a custom tennis kit from Khaite, a brand that isn’t particularly sporty but knows a good marketing moment when it sees one. Williams lost in the first round of mixed doubles play last week, and plays her first-round singles match on Sunday.
- Along with No. 7 seed Novak Djokovic, Williams is one of the last holdovers from the previous era; this year, we’ve seen the long-awaited ascendance of a new generation of stars. Many have embraced fashion from the get-go. Coco Gauff, who won the US Open in 2023 and the French Open this year, appeared on the cover of Vogue in 2024, and has built a following around her on-court kits, recently releasing a collection with New Balance. On the men’s side, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are on a dominant run, both on the court and in racking up sponsorships (you can arguably draw a direct line from Sinner’s Gucci deal, which had a sensational launch with the rule-bending bag he brought to Wimbledon, to today’s fashion feeding frenzy). Brands are scrambling to sign the rest of the field, with Vuori last week announcing its first tennis ambassador, Britain’s Jack Draper.
- Category expansion is rampant. Mejuri and other jewellery brands, not a major court-side presence in the past (though the tennis bracelet does have a US Open connection), are headed to Queens this year. Beauty is also becoming a bigger presence. No. 2 seed Iga Świątek is Lancôme’s first athlete ambassador, while No. 3-seeded Gauff works with hair care line Carol’s Daughter.
- No sponsorship? No problem! “What to wear to the US Open” is the new “What time is the Super Bowl” for SEO-starved media. Any brands that can remotely claim to be preppy or sporty have convinced at least one publication to include it in an affiliate link-packed roundup of court-side style. Tuckernuck, Hill House Home and a few others have gone further, putting US Open-themed edits on their websites.
- If you want to dress like a member of the ball crew, Ralph Lauren’s got you covered. The brand has had a US Open partnership for two decades and has sold this particular kit for a while. If $148 is too steep for an official ball crew polo, you can buy one actually worn by a ball girl in 2019 on eBay for $80.
We’ll have plenty of US Open coverage this week, including from our new sports correspondent Mike Sykes. You can sign up here for his twice-weekly newsletter, The Kicks You Wear, on all things sports and fashion. For a rundown of all the ways fashion is engaging with the US Open, I’d also recommend BoF alum Daniel Yaw-Miller’s Substack newsletter, SportsVerse.
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