Naomi Osaka’s appearance at this May’s Met Gala in New York – which she wittily dubbed “the grand slam of fashion” – was a whirlwind business engagement jammed between two of tennis’s major tournaments. With stacked schedules, tennis superstars are usually found taking ice baths between events. Not Osaka, who donned a 9kg Robert Wun couture gown in response to the Met’s “fashion is art” theme.
Her presence at the Met Ball was more than a celebrity detour. Osaka is not just a professional tennis player – she has moved beyond the limiting boundaries of the sport.
For me, as a researcher of Black fashion culture and identity politics, this raises interesting questions: is Osaka first in line to define what tennis looks like in the future? How does a tennis player secure a place on Anna Wintour’s notoriously strict guest list of cultural power brokers, celebrities and creatives?
Well, Osaka is simultaneously an athlete, fashion collaborator, businesswoman, activist, mother and global celebrity. Superhero? Maybe.
The scandalising tennis ring walk
I was lucky enough to watch Osaka at the Madrid Open this spring, striding onto court in a custom Nike dress and baseball visor. From the stands, my son and I bellowed our support during her high-octane contest with Aryna Sabalenka. We love her point of difference and her cause.
Part of that difference lies in how she occupies and owns the court. Like a boxer making a ring walk, Osaka’s arrival has become part of the spectacle itself – she has turned the walk into a runway. The outfit, the styling and the anticipation all contribute to the performance before a ball is struck.
Yet discussions about Osaka’s clothing often miss the bigger story.
Tennis has always been a performance culture in which clothing communicates status, belonging and authority. French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen scandalised audiences in the 1920s with shorter skirts and sleeveless designs. American tennis champion Billie Jean King used sporting appearance as part of her broader challenge to gender inequality in the 1970s.
In 2026, we would be forgiven for thinking that some of the more traditional values have been relaxed. Wimbledon has allowed women to wear dark undershorts for good reason, so why does Osaka’s sequinned on-court arrival provoke such division, outrage and racist hate?
Unapologetically Black
Historically, Black athletes in women’s sports who used fashion as a form of self-expression often attracted criticism for causing distraction and approaching sport with a lack of seriousness.
Take, for example, record-breaking US track and field athlete Florence Griffith Joyner, Flo-Jo. Her one-legged racing suits, long decorated fingernails, elaborate hairstyles and unapologetically glamorous aesthetic challenged assumptions about what elite athleticism should look like.
But they were not random eccentricities; they drew upon longstanding traditions within Black beauty culture where hair, nails and dress function as forms of creativity, identity and self-definition.
It’s impossible to talk about the burden of legend, flamboyance and legacy in tennis without mentioning one of the greatest athletes, icons and sporting performers of all time: Serena Williams. She transformed the visual politics of tennis, forcing a traditionally white sport to reckon with a Black woman as its defining image.
As a young woman, Williams discovered Flo-Jo’s lace and hooded speed suits – part of her lineage, part of her future legacy.
“I was inspired by Flo-Jo, who was a wonderful track athlete … when I was growing up,” was the response Williams offered when being probed on the one-legged Nike catsuit she wore at the 2021 Australia Open.
The lineage between Flo-Jo, Williams and Osaka – with their striking sportswear, luxury fashion, activism, global celebrity and desire to challenge the status quo – points to a longer tradition of Black women using style not as decoration but as cultural authorship.
Who gets to embody tradition?
If Williams challenged who could belong in tennis, Osaka represents a generation asking who gets to define its future image. This is why companies such as Louis Vuitton and Nike invest in Osaka. Not because she wears clothes well but because she embodies a globally marketable story about race, gender, resistance, femininity, identity and youth culture.
Afterall, Osaka is exceptional. A multiple grand slam champion and the first Asian world number one, she belongs firmly within tennis’s elite.
Paying tribute to her multicultural roots, Osaka said last year: “My heritage is my power.” She has forged a complex public image combining influences from Black diasporic culture, Japanese aesthetics, luxury fashion and contemporary celebrity branding.
Constantly challenging expectations of her Japanese identity – femininity, humility and modest public behaviour, Osaka moves between these worlds with a fluency that reflects the global nature of modern sport itself, negotiating her own cultural identity. Perhaps this is at odds with the traditionally quaint world of tennis.
Misogynoir is the sexism that is experienced particularly by Black women. This could explain why expressions of individuality that are commended as innovative in some athletes, such as Roger Federer’s military suit at Wimbledon in 2009, are more likely to be treated as controversial – as the furore around Williams’s outfits has shown.
A few days after Osaka’s latest couture arrival at the French Open, her opponent Laura Siegemund was asked what she thought about all the fashion. “I come here to play tennis, not to put on a fashion show,” she replied.
Fair enough. But let’s not forget that tennis has always been a fashion show. From Lenglen to Serena Williams, athletes have been using clothing to communicate identity, aspiration and difference for more than a century.
Naomi Osaka’s fashion intervention is not a distraction from tennis. It is part of a much older struggle over who gets to define the sport’s image, its values and ultimately its future.
Andrew Ibi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.