Naomi Osaka Is The Perfect Tennis Fashion Icon

Naomi Osaka Is The Perfect Tennis Fashion Icon

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HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP via Getty Images

By

Chris Lavergne

At Wimbledon this week, Naomi Osaka stepped onto Court 3 wearing a white kimono-style dress by Tokyo designer Hana Yagi, embellished with cherry blossoms and cranes and finished with an embroidered obi sash. She told reporters afterward that she was thinking of Lucy Liu’s snow-white kimono in “Kill Bill.” She then won her first round match against Elsa Jacquemot.

A tennis player wearing a white outfit with a wide-brimmed hat and a long sheer veil enters the blue court at the Australian Open.
Dressed in a flowing white fringed ensemble with a wide-brimmed hat and a back veil, Naomi Osaka enters Melbourne Park for her first round match at the 2026 Australian Open. Photo by Robert Prange/Getty Images.

It is the third Grand Slam in a row that has turned the walk-on into couture. For the 2026 Australian Open, Robert Wun created a wide-brimmed hat with a full floor-length brim and white feathered butterflies, inspired by his daughter Shai’s love of jellyfish. At the French Open, Kevin Germanier donned a black beaded corset over a glittering gold Nike dress, with a Victorian-style gold stone for the next rounds.

Tennis player from behind wearing a teal flared skirt and white Nike jacket with a large teal bow tied at the back, holding a tennis racket.
Osaka warms up on the practice court for the 2024 US Open in blue and white Nikes, a giant neon bow tied on her back, racket in hand. Photo by Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images.

Osaka said she doesn’t talk much, so she lets the clothes do it. The look carries her Japanese and Haitian heritage, her mother, and her tennis history all at once. The Melbourne butterflies got a nod so far in 2021 when one landed on their face mid-game and went viral.

A female tennis player stands on a clay court in a gold-embroidered dress with a tulle train, holding a blue tennis racket.
Ahead of her fourth-round clash at the 2026 French Open, Osaka stepped onto the Roland Garros clay court wearing a lace-embellished, sequined dress – the product of a collaboration between Nike and designer Robert Wun. Photo by Ian MacNicol / Getty Images.

Osaka has been a global ambassador for Louis Vuitton since January 2021, launched a swimwear collection with Frankies Bikinis in May, and has released several denim collections with Levi’s. In 2020 she created a 10-piece capsule for Japanese-American designer Hanako Maeda’s label ADEAM during New York Fashion Week.

A tennis player with outstretched arms wearing an embroidered kimono with crane motifs, standing on a grass court with a blue tennis racket in one hand.
Arms outstretched during warm-ups, Osaka wears an embroidered all-white kimono-style dress on Center Court ahead of her first-round match at Wimbledon 2026. Photo by Henry Nicholls / AFP via Getty Images.

Critics called her clothes “extravagant” and “classless.” His response: “I’m not doing this for them, though, they’ll never find out, and I don’t want them to find out. I’m doing this for people like me.”

A close-up of black and white Nike tennis shoes with white satin bows on the ankles, mid-air above a hard green court.
A zoom captures the black and white Nike sneakers – accented with white ribbon bows – worn by Osaka during her second-round match at the 2024 US Open. Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images.

Pushback is not new. Andre Agassi spent the late 1980s getting the same treatment of acid-washed denim shorts at the 1988 US Open, a hot pink and black kit at the 1990 French Open that reportedly pushed the ITF to tighten dress codes, and boycotting Wimbledon from 1988 to 1990 with its white rule. The Williams sisters also held a version of it. Agassi finally played Wimbledon in 1992 and won it.

A woman in a colorful dragon dress with a red obi belt and a black pointed cap melted, wearing a sculpture with red jewelry, on the red carpet.
Serving as co-chair of the 2021 Met Gala, Osaka arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art wearing a stunning dragon-print corset dress, a black train, and a rare sculpted hairdo adorned with red jewels. Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images.

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