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If there’s one tennis star who’s going to do Wimbledon whites in a way that’s both intentional and high-fashion, it’s Naomi Osaka.<\/p>\n
Ahead of her first-round match<\/a> against France’s Elsa Jacquemot, Osaka stepped onto the court at the All England Club in a custom white look. Crafted by Tokyo-based designer Hana Yagi, it included embroidered cranes, a cherry blossom pattern, a stream of intricately constructed bows and a ruffled tulle skirt. The garment, which Osaka wore over her Nike kit, was an homage to Japanese ceremonial dress. She finished the look with a kanzashi, a traditional Japanese hair ornament.<\/p>\n “I like to use fashion as a medium for storytelling,” Osaka told British Vogue<\/a> of her tournament entrances. “Every walk-out is an opportunity to bring people into my creative world. The fact that people care about it and are excited to see what’s next is also pretty cool.”<\/p>\n Although Wimbledon’s all-white dress code meant that Osaka’s entrance look needed to be devoid of color \u2014 a departure for the high-fashion star \u2014 Yagi told British Vogue that the constraints allowed him to focus on “material, transparency, construction and silhouette.”<\/p>\n “I wanted the garment to exist as the moment before performance,” Yagi said. “The walk-on surrounds Naomi in ceremony, while the Nike kit represents the athlete in competition. I thought about them as two chapters within the same story.”<\/p>\n Marty Harper, Osaka’s creative director, added of Wimbledon’s sartorial legacy: “It’s one of the few places in sport where ceremony still feels inseparable from competition. We wanted to acknowledge that while creating a dialogue with Japanese ceremonial dress.”<\/p>\n This is hardly the first time Osaka has brought high-fashion dressing to the court. For her first-round match against Germany’s Laura Siegemund at the 2026 French Open in May<\/a>, the tennis phenom stepped out in a bespoke, black look crafted by Swiss couturier Kevin Germanier out of Osaka’s past competition gear. Beneath the chic getup was a sparkly brown Nike kit embellished with vertical rows of gold sequins.<\/p>\n Osaka attended the Met Gala earlier that month<\/a> in an exaggerated white coat dress and matching headpiece embellished with crimson-colored feathers<\/a> by London-based designer Robert Wun. She shed the elaborate look to reveal another show-stopping garment: a scarlet-red frock adorned with thousands of Swarovski crystals<\/a> that resembled the body’s muscles and tendons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n