Naomi Osaka Is an Absolute Icon of Tennis Fashion

At Wimbledon this week, Naomi Osaka walked onto Court 3 in a custom white kimono-style robe by Tokyo designer Hana Yagi, embroidered with cherry blossoms and cranes and finished with a textured obi sash. She told reporters afterward she’d been thinking about Lucy Liu’s all-white kimono in “Kill Bill.” Then she won her first-round match against Elsa Jacquemot.

Draped in a flowing white pleated ensemble topped with a wide-brimmed hat and trailing veil, Naomi Osaka makes her entrance at Melbourne Park for her first-round match at the 2026 Australian Open. Photo by Robert Prange / Getty Images.

It’s the third Grand Slam in a row she’s turned the walk-on into couture. At the 2026 Australian Open, Robert Wun built her a wide-brim hat with a sheer floor-length veil and feathered white butterflies, inspired by her daughter Shai’s love of jellyfish. At the French Open, Kevin Germanier gave her a black beaded corset cascading over a shimmering gold Nike dress, with Victorian-style gold tulle added in later rounds.

Osaka warms up on the practice court at the 2024 US Open in a lime-green and white Nike ensemble, a large neon bow cinched at her back, racket in hand. Photo by Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images.

Osaka has said she doesn’t talk much, so she lets the clothes do it. The looks carry her Japanese and Haitian heritage, her motherhood, and her tennis history all at once. The butterflies in Melbourne nodded to the moment in 2021 when one landed on her face mid-match and went viral.

Before her fourth-round clash at the 2026 French Open, Osaka stepped onto the Roland Garros clay in a gilded, sequined tiered gown — the product of a collaboration between Nike and designer Robert Wun. Photo by Ian MacNicol / Getty Images.

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

Arms outstretched mid-warm-up, Osaka wears an all-white embroidered kimono-style robe on Centre Court ahead of her first-round match at Wimbledon 2026. Photo by Henry Nicholls / AFP via Getty Images.

Critics have called her outfits “extra” and “classless.” Her answer: “I don’t do this for them, though; they will never get it, and I don’t want them to. I do this for the people that are like me.”

A close-up captures the bold black-and-white Nike sneakers — accented with white ribbon bows — that Osaka wore during her second-round match at the 2024 US Open. Photo by Luke Hales / Getty Images.

The pushback isn’t new. Andre Agassi spent the late 1980s getting the same treatment for acid-wash denim shorts at the 1988 US Open, for a hot-pink-and-black kit at the 1990 French Open that reportedly pushed the ITF to tighten dress codes, and for boycotting Wimbledon from 1988 to 1990 rather than conform to its all-white rule. The Williams sisters caught a version of it too. Agassi finally played Wimbledon in 1992 and won it.

Serving as co-chair of the 2021 Met Gala, Osaka arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a dramatic dragon-print corset gown, black ruffled cape train, and an extraordinary sculptural hair arrangement adorned with red gems. Photo by Theo Wargo / Getty Images.

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