By Giorgia Cantarini
Through custom Nike kits, couture walk-on looks and a deeply personal approach to dressing, Naomi Osaka is proving that athletic performance and individual style no longer belong to separate worlds.
Wimbledon 2026
For decades, the visual language of tennis was built around discipline: white dresses, clean lines and uniforms designed not to distract from the game. Naomi Osaka is rewriting that convention. Her outfits do not simply comply with the physical demands of professional sport; they communicate fantasy, cultural identity and personality while allowing her to move at full speed.
That distinction is fundamental. Osaka is not wearing fashion despite being an athlete. She is using movement, competition and the ritual of entering the court as creative starting points.
Nike remains the technical foundation of her tennis wardrobe, but Osaka has increasingly treated the sportswear giant as a platform through which independent designers and couture-level ideas can enter the game. For her return to the US Open in 2024, Nike connected her with Yoon Ahn, founder of AMBUSH, to create one-of-one day and night competition kits. The green and black performance dresses were developed around the exact requirements of Osaka’s game, while removable skirts, jackets, ruffles and oversized bows transformed the outfits into expressions of playful femininity.
Roland Garros 2026
Since then, her Grand Slam appearances have developed into complete visual narratives. At the 2026 Australian Open, she collaborated with Nike and couturier Robert Wun on an aquatic, jellyfish-inspired entrance look influenced by a bedtime story she had shared with her daughter, Shai. A veiled hat, umbrella, pleated layers and floating fabric surrounded the technical kit underneath, turning the walk onto the court into a moment of transformation.
At Roland-Garros, Swiss designer Kevin Germanier reconstructed pieces from Osaka’s previous Nike wardrobe into a beaded corset and semi-sheer pleated skirt. Once removed, they revealed a bronze-gold Nike kit covered in sequins. At Wimbledon, Tokyo-based designer Hana Yagi worked within the tournament’s restrictive all-white dress code, creating a ceremonial walk-on look inspired by Japanese garments, embroidered cranes, cherry blossoms and the dramatic white kimono worn by O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill. Beneath it sat another functional Nike dress, decorated with three-dimensional floral elements.
This has become Osaka’s most important fashion contribution: the separation between the walk-on look and the competition kit. The first can be theatrical, symbolic and crafted like couture. The second must support an elite athlete’s body. Together, they create a new kind of sporting wardrobe in which fantasy does not interfere with performance but frames it.
Her off-court choices follow the same logic. Osaka rarely approaches fashion as straightforward celebrity dressing. For the 2026 Met Gala, she returned to Robert Wun for a highly constructed look exploring the body, vulnerability and physical transformation. Rather than simply wearing a recognisable luxury label, she chooses designers capable of translating an idea into an image.
Osaka’s style also reflects a wider cultural shift. Sport is no longer influencing fashion only through leggings, tracksuits or sneaker culture. Its equipment, rituals and visual codes are becoming material for luxury design.
Met Gala 2026
Met Gala 2026
Cecilie Bahnsen’s ongoing collaboration with ASICS places technical running silhouettes inside the designer’s romantic universe of flowers, transparency and modern femininity. Simone Rocha’s first project with adidas Originals, unveiled in 2026, brought sportswear into her mythology of pearls, bows, ceremony and subverted girlhood. Miu Miu and New Balance have taken the relationship even closer to professional competition through Coco Gauff, developing performance-led tennis clothing and customised versions of her CG2 tennis shoe alongside commercial pieces for consumers.
Even jewellery is entering the game. Bijules’ Shoot It Hot Sport Pearl collection translates the geometry of tennis, basketball, volleyball, football, golf and baseball into hand-carved pearls, gold settings and sculptural fine jewellery. Here, sport is not treated as a merchandising theme but as cultural memory: the shape of a ball becomes a precious object, carrying associations of competition, community and identity.
This is the wider movement Osaka embodies so convincingly. The athlete is no longer simply the face of a campaign or the body used to demonstrate a product’s technical performance. She can be a creative collaborator, a storyteller and an author of her own image.
Naomi Osaka is a fashion icon because she refuses to leave her personality outside the court. She enters the stadium with the same imagination she brings to the red carpet, without forgetting that the clothes must ultimately move, breathe and perform.
Her style suggests that the most relevant uniform of the future will not erase individuality in pursuit of function. It will make function personal.
Australian Open 2026
US open 2025
US Open 2024
