Fashion's Biggest US Open Yet ft. Vuori, MSCHF, Y-3 & Taylor Townsend
The tournament is now a platform for experimental collaborations and ambassador reveals, while serving as an entry point for new brands looking to disrupt tennis.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to SportsVerse, my twice-weekly newsletter that tells stories you can't find anywhere else about the intersection of sports, fashion, business, and culture.
New York Fashion Week will soon be upon us, but no one is thinking about that right now because the US Open is here first (as this piece by Madé’s data, but make it fashion will tell you).
Last year, the two events coincided, and a cross-section of guests hopped between their fancy box seats on Arthur Ashe and their seats on the front row of various hot-ticket runway shows.
The 2024 US Open emerged as a genuine fashion showcase in and of itself, underscored by Naomi Osaka’s collaboration with Nike and Yoon Ambush for her eye-catching tournament outfit.
This year, fashion, jewellery, and sportswear brands wasted no time in lining up collaborations and special projects to grab their share of fans’ attention heading into the tournament, which is kicking off early this week with a fun exhibition mixed doubles showcase masquerading as a serious Grand Slam competition. The real action gets going next Monday, but the additional early week allows for a more playful atmosphere for brands, athletes, fans and creators to come together and have fun.
And what good timing. There is a palpable sense that casual tennis fans and even non-tennis fans are more interested than ever before in the sport’s cultural happenings.
Let’s take a look at the interesting brand movements so far.
Vuori’s Big Tennis Reveal
Vuori, originally founded in 2014 by Joe Kudla in sunny Encinitas, Calif, to create men’s yoga apparel, has had an incredible ascent in the activewear category.
In December, the brand reached a $5.5 billion valuation following an $825 million funding round led by General Atlantic.
Throughout its decade-long existence, the brand has steadily expanded, adding new categories such as womenswear, gym-wear and lifestyle clothing, opening flagship stores and onboarding retailers to carry its products further than its original DTC channels could.
The next stage of its expansion, naturally, is tennis. Vuori’s trademark sweatpants, shirts and shorts are so versatile that many had naturally been wearing them to play tennis already. Since 2022, it has been increasingly adding tennis-specific clothing to its assortments to cater to the growing demand from amateur players looking for on-court options that aren’t Nike, Wilson or any of the other legacy brands that dominate the tennis apparel game.
The slow and considered approach has reminded me of how On bided its time to effectively and authentically launch in the tennis category, rather than rushing in and making a mess of things with product or marketing efforts that missed the mark.
As we know, nothing drives authenticity for a brand’s new sportswear category like a solid athlete ambassador representing its clothing on the big stage and bringing the logo alongside the other brands competing at the highest level.
This was the one thing that Vuori was yet to secure. First reported by Jessica Schiffer of Hard Court, Vuori’s is set to announce its first big-ticket tennis ambassador. That ambassador is British tennis star Jack Draper, the leftie currently ranked world no.5. The brand has been teasing the official announcement, which will be made at a store event in New York later today, where he will make an appearance.
Vuori will be the latest beneficiary of Nike’s policy of consolidating its roster of tennis stars. Nike is increasingly letting top players leave for other brands in favor of honing its marketing efforts on two of the game’s greatest modern stars, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, who are both signed to the Swoosh.
As I explained when Frances Tiafoe left Nike to sign for Lululemon earlier this year, this is not a loss for the brand, or any party. It frees up marketing dollars and attention to focus on their core players, the player is able to cash in and be the star athlete around which a new brand can build its tennis category, and Nike consolidating its tennis roster frees up market share for newer entrants to the category like Vuori, On or Lululemon, to add some competition.
Draper is a smart pick for Vuori. He’s very marketable and already has exposure in the fashion industry, since he signed on as a Burberry ambassador earlier this year. He will work with Vuori to develop a signature line of products to bring his fans into the brand’s orbit.
Racquet and MSCHF
Tennis publication-turned-lifestyle brand Racquet Mag has made a big splash at the US Open for several years. This time, along with its Racquet House pop-up at Seaport, the publication has worked on a big product collaboration with fashion-art collective/general troublemakers MSCHF, which has already got fans and athletes talking.
The $650 bag, which goes on sale this time next week, is a limited edition play on MSCHF’s Global Supply Chain Telephone Bag. It resembles a tennis ball in all its neon green glory.
Word on the street is that many of your favorite tennis players have already been asking how and where they can get their hands on these bags, so don’t say I didn’t warn you when you see them pop up on a court walk-on moment over the next three weeks.
Adidas Finally Leans Back Into Tennis With Y-3
First reported by Robert Cordero (Department of Edge) for Players last week, Adidas is finally injecting its tennis assortment with the fashion-forward approach it has taken in recent years to tennis, football, and running.
It’s doing so by bringing in its Y-3 line (one of its longest-running partnerships, an elevated sub-brand run jointly with Japanese label Yohji Yamamoto since 2002). Adidas has used the fashion credentials of Y-3 across various of its sports categories at this point, most recently releasing a capsule collection with Real Madrid which featured Jude Bellingham and Zinedine Zidane as stars of the campaign.
As Cordero wrote, “the 18-piece range features minimalist Climacool apparel with prints inspired by Suibokuga — a Japanese ink-wash painting style — carried over from the season’s Autumn 2025 runway collection. Standouts include the Tennis FreeLift T-Shirt Pro, and Y-3’s reimagined takes on Adidas’ Barricade 13 and Adizero Ubersonic 5 tennis shoes.”
The collection will be worn on court by Adidas athletes Alexander Zverev, Jessica Pegula, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and the up-and-coming Iva Jovic.
Hopefully, this signals a genuine strategic shift in Adidas' approach to its tennis category rather than a one-off push to capitalise on the US Open buzz.
On Continues Its Tennis Dominance
On popped up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, over the weekend and again at Manhattan’s Riverside Courts on Monday. The brand, continuing in its quest to embed itself in modern tennis culture, has been partnering with Pro Shop NYC on racket restringing services (you can read all about the city’s exciting new tennis retail concept and its founder Vicente Munoz, in this exclusive interview with SportsVerse from last week).
The rest of the schedule for the “Thanks for Playing” truck looks like this:
Aug 19: McCarren Tennis Courts and the On store Williamsburg
Aug 20: On store NYC Flagship in Flatiron
Aug 21: Pier 42 LES, Manhattan (I’m told with a DJ, racket restringing sessiona and a special guest appearance on court… and considering who On has to draw on from its tennis ambassador roster, I would say that’s worth a visit).
Honorable Mentions
Jewellery brands are investing heavily in tennis at the moment (these fall into the Honorable Mentions section only because a dedicated SportsVerse edition will analyse this in the coming weeks). Mejuri partnered with Racquet magazine after a successful Wimbledon moment. Gorjana, which announced a “sports club” of athlete ambassadors at the beginning of the month, kicked off its US Open programming last night, hosting an event with American tennis player Jessica Pegula on the Upper West Side.
Asics hosted “Courtside on the Hudson” last weekend, which was an open event, offering free playing time, coaching, and entertainment to anyone who wanted to pull up and play at the Hudson River Park tennis courts.
Taylor Townsend, ranked world no.1 in doubles, will reveal her new independent label, “TT”, which she has been developing in collaboration with designer Alexander-John, as reported by The New York Times this week.
After seeing the cultural impact of Wimbledon earlier this summer, there’s no doubt that the US Open is increasingly becoming a staging ground for experimental collaborations and ambassador reveals, while serving as an entry point for new brands looking to disrupt the tennis category.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
See you next time,
DYM
Fantastic read!
that bag is really, oddly cool?! Draper is a great get and Y-3 seems like a great fit for tennis, can go sleek to offer an alternative to the retro stuff about the place