In case you haven’t noticed, Morgan Riddle has been very outside as of late. She moved to New York earlier this spring, and ever since, her Instagram grid has become a mosaic of rooftop photo shoots, day drinking in the West Village, and head-out-the-window taxi escapades with her girlfriends.
Riddle isn’t the only one in her inner circle who recently took up New York City residence. Her best friend now lives down the block from her, and she was already friendly with a bunch of the women in her building. “I watch The Buccaneers and in the second season they have a townhouse that was a lady commune,” Riddle tells me when we meet at Pier 25 on the Hudson River Parkway for a short-lived “hot girl walk.” (It was windy. We got hungry. There were far too many finance bros juggling calls with cardio.) “I think it’s technically illegal in New York City because of brothels, so this is my version of it.”
The 28-year-old influencer, who can recite her entire birth chart by heart, attributes these moves to her group entering their Saturn return. “You don’t expect to get uprooted in such a way, but it sneaks up on you,” says Riddle. “All of my girlfriends around my age had something—whether it’s a job change, moving across the country, or a breakup.”
For Riddle, it was a combination of all three. Soon after she began dating tennis star Taylor Fritz in 2020, the icy blonde beauty emerged as the defining WAG of the sport, with spectators obsessively tracking both her courtside fashion (a head-to-toe chocolate Ferragamo ensemble one day, a vintage Valentino corset and matching skirt the next) and social content (her first viral TikTok was a “GRWM” for the Australian Open). By 2023, The New York Times had dubbed her “the most famous woman in men’s tennis,” and deals with brands from Grey Goose to Chanel Beauty followed.
Jumpsuit, Etro. Necklace, Versace. Shoes, Christian Louboutin.
Then, six or so years later, they broke up. Riddle tells me that the split occurred just over two months ago, and at first, she was unsure how to “hard launch” the news. “When public relationships end, it’s standard to do some sort of Instagram statement or video, and I tried to write that a few times and I was just like, ‘This is not me,’” she says once we’ve relocated to Tribeca mainstay The Odeon for lunch. Instead, she ordered a “world’s best ex-girlfriend” T-shirt on Amazon, took a selfie in it, and added the picture to a carousel of New York nightlife snapshots. “We’re on good terms, so I wanted to make it more lighthearted than breakups usually are online,” she explains.
In the following weeks, she continued finding ways to “make breakups fun again”—the personal manifesto she debuted via the caption of a video showing off the sequin Fendi Baguette she bought in lieu of a couch for her new apartment. But Riddle says her current antics pale in comparison to what she’d post before there was a K next to her follower count. “I used to have this recurring series where if men would send me, like, diabolical DMs I would find their government name, their LinkedIn, and dox them,” she says in her affectless manner of speaking, which, much like the impassive expression she’d wear during matches, conceals a mischievous streak.
Dress, LoveShackFancy.
“Because people would get offended by everything in the tennis world, and it didn’t only reflect on me, I had to reel myself in a lot. Now I don’t have to do that anymore!” (Three weeks after our interview, Riddle posted a video in response to a controversial New York Times op-ed about hetero-optimism, saying, “Misandry is personal and it irritates and misogyny is institutional and it kills.” Then she suggested some of her favorite recent reads: Strangers, Men Who Hate Women, Wordslut, Pink-Pilled, Men Explain Things to Me, Face, I Who Have Never Known Men, and The Story of Art Without Men.)
There’s no place she’d rather be unleashed upon than New York City. She recently bought a Brick and has been spending full Saturdays out and about with her girlfriends, blissfully blocked from logging onto social media. Most of her nights out are spent at various members-only clubs, though she also has a favorite dive bar. “Living in L.A. the last five years, I was always so excited to go on the next trip. But I had to go to London last week for two days and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I miss New York,’” she says. “I love my new Barbie dream house apartment.”
Dress, ISAIA Napoli.
Ugly Betty was always the show that made her fantasize about moving to Manhattan. She’s now watching Sex and the City for the first time and she and her stylist, Emily Essen, are feeling sartorially inspired. “We’ve always really loved pulling vintage, so I could see us doing a lot more of that, even if it’s just $20 T-shirts from an old man’s eBay closet that we cut up and into a cute dress,” says Essen, who works under Jared Ellner, the stylist of choice for It girls like Sabrina Carpenter. “There just hasn’t been much opportunity at the fancier events to explore what her day dressing could look like, what her street style could be, so that’s exciting.”
As for DeuxMoi’s assertion she moved to the city for a man in finance? “I’m really glad they went with that because it’s so funny,” she says of the fake news. “I think I’m going to start playing off of that.”
Jumpsuit, Etro. Necklace, Versace.
Growing up in Minneapolis, Riddle never fantasized about marriage. Her parents split when she was in preschool, leaving Riddle to be primarily raised by her mother. “She would work late nights and I’d be in the office with her, seeing how important it is to always have your own money,” says Riddle, “I was just so inspired by watching her build her own career as a single mom. I never wanted to rely on someone.”
Instead, according to her best friend, Colton Arman, Riddle has become the person everyone relies on. “I think of Morgan like the Taylor Swift song ‘Father Figure.’ She’s just very giving with her family, friends, and loved ones. She never really asks for anything in return,” Arman tells me of the eldest daughter. “She is truly just one of the smartest, funniest, and most clever girls I’ve ever met. There are friends I worry about in life, but Morgan is someone who I know will be successful and happy whichever way she decides to go.”
Dress, ISAIA Napoli. Earrings, Ben Amun.
The faith Arman places in her has a lot to do with the life she built well before she became tennis’s favorite better half. After graduating from Wagner College in Staten Island as an English major, where she jokes that she also “dated a hockey player—traumatizing,” Riddle returned to Minnesota and took on jobs in social media at Love Your Melon, a beanie brand benefiting pediatric cancer research, and at a video game nonprofit. When the pandemic made remote work possible, she relocated to Los Angeles, where she met Fritz on Raya and moved in with him within weeks. When the Association of Tennis Professionals tour resumed in 2021, she joined him on the road.
For the first year, she kept up a nine-to-five. But between the constant travel, tournament demands, and scheduling challenges across time zones, fashioning her life as a tennis WAG into a career proved far more sustainable. Not to mention lucrative. (Riddle’s earnings from one sponsored TikTok alone are about five times what she was making in a month at her former jobs, she told The New York Times.)
Cardigan, Guest In Residence. Shorts, The Frankie Shop. Pumps, Christian Louboutin.
Serving looks offered Riddle another revenue stream, too. “I tell her all the time that fashion is just like a sport. There’s different players, different teams, different coaches,” says Essen, whose guidance has helped Riddle land partnerships with designers like Thom Browne. “If you play it right, you can keep climbing this, and she gets really into that.”
Building financial independence was important to her. “Say, hypothetically, I fully supported him and his career and didn’t make my own money and didn’t develop my own brand, what would I be doing now? Would I be back in Minnesota?” Riddle wonders. “If you don’t have that autonomy and you don’t make your own money and you want to leave [a relationship]…I just hope any WAG or woman can make that choice.”
She also wouldn’t have developed the skills needed to help cofound The 400 Club, a sports marketing agency and membership community centered on female sports fans that she runs alongside British entrepreneur Cherry Beagles. “I could’ve started a tennis athleisure brand like five years ago, but I didn’t feel like the world needed another one,” Riddle says. “Bringing people together to watch sports, and making it a more welcoming environment and experience for women and girls, felt more aligned with my mission.” They recently hosted a Miami Grand Prix watch-party event for 400 London-based F1 fans, replete with espresso martinis and gift bags. And between the rise of hockey-centered shows like Off Campus and Heated Rivalry, plus the real-life success of the U.S. national hockey teams at the Olympics, Riddle is also eager to bring the girls to the rink. “I feel like every NHL team needs to be locking in on [their female audience].”
Dress, Self-Portrait. Earrings, Ben Amun.
Dress, Self-Portrait. Earrings, bracelet, Ben Amun. Shoes, Stella McCartney.
Riddle didn’t necessarily expect this deeper investment in sports to dovetail with her departure from WAG-dom, but it’s the player she’s sworn off, not the game. “I made, like, a 33-point non-negotiables list for [my next relationship]. It has basic things like political alignment, shared life goals, intellectual intimacy, no sports betting or gambling, only makes my life happier,” she says. “When I look toward my next relationship, I will prioritize being loved in the way that [Colton] loves me. I think that’s the most important lesson out of all of this. I would not have been able to make the decision I made or do what I’ve done the last two months without him.”
Oh, and one other key nonnegotiable? “I’ll never date an athlete again.”
Lead Image: Cardigan, Guest In Residence. Bra, shorts, The Frankie Shop. Necklace, Jennifer Behr.
Hair by Rei Kawauchi for Oribe; makeup by Sasha Borax for La Mer.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.elle.com ’
