Women Athletes Don’t Have to Choose Between Style and Seriousness

Why does fashion become a test of seriousness?

At the 2026 US Open, Naomi Osaka wore a custom gown inspired by Allen Iverson, complete with tulle, streetwear references and clippings from her career. She told Vogue she admired how he brought sports, culture and fashion together.

Today, Iverson’s style is part of his legacy. NBA tunnel fits are content. Brands build campaigns around what athletes wear before they step onto the court. We tell athletes to develop identities, build businesses and connect with fans beyond competition.

Then a woman athlete puts thought into her clothes, and suddenly we’re debating whether she cares enough about winning. Why would those things be mutually exclusive?

This is what’s in the Group Chat this week: the clothes, the reaction to them and the business underneath it.

Osaka is helping shape the story

Osaka has turned the Grand Slam walk-on into its own event. At the 2026 French Open, Kevin Germanier created a dramatic black entrance look using pieces of her previous competition gear. At Wimbledon, she wore an all-white Hana Yagi design inspired by Japanese ceremonial dress.

Osaka researches designers and shares creative references. For the US Open, she worked with Law Roach to connect her Iverson-inspired entrance with Nike’s basketball-inspired kit. She is actively helping shape what the clothes say about her.

At the French Open, Osaka beat Laura Siegemund in straight sets. Afterward, Siegemund’s comments became part of the fashion-show debate. But the distinction matters: her complaint concerned what she saw as extra preparation time for Osaka and inconsistent enforcement of the rules. She said she was fine with other players doing a fashion entrance.

That’s a legitimate competition question. If there’s a rule, enforce it consistently. It doesn’t follow that liking fashion makes someone less committed to tennis. Naomi walked onto the court in a gown, took it off and won the match. Apparently, the woman can multitask.

Sports have always cared about clothes

Sometimes we talk as if fashion is invading sports. Sneakers, uniforms, walkout robes and Olympic kits have mattered for a long time. Women athletes have used clothes to express themselves for decades.

Flo-Jo designed distinctive race outfits, wore bold nails and makeup, and set world records. Her style belongs in the story of her greatness; it doesn’t erase the running.

Serena Williams’s black catsuit at the 2018 French Open was also functional. After her experience with blood clots, she explained that it supported her circulation. Later that year, the French Tennis Federation’s president said outfits like it would not be accepted going forward. A woman with 23 Grand Slam singles titles found herself at the center of a debate about whether her clothing respected tennis.

Women athletes can end up in an impossibly narrow lane: be marketable, but don’t look too interested in being marketable. Be feminine, but not so feminine that anyone questions your seriousness. Build a brand, but make it seem like it happened accidentally while you were thinking exclusively about practice.

Iverson pushed back against restrictions on how players dressed. Now the NBA tunnel is a fashion destination.

I wonder if women athletes are going through their own version of that process. Something gets called a distraction, becomes part of the culture, and eventually the business recognizes its value.

Personal style is part of the business

This goes beyond whether Naomi Osaka looks cool. Women athletes have commercial influence.

Parity and SurveyMonkey’s 2024 research surveyed more than 14,000 adults across seven countries. It found that women’s sports fans were nearly three times as likely to say they would buy a product recommended by a woman athlete as by another type of influencer. That is self-reported preference, but it tells us something meaningful about the connection between athletes and fans.

Look at Caitlin Clark. Nike’s Caitlin 1 launch included an 18-piece apparel collection, with performance pieces, jackets, hoodies and tees designed to work on the court and in everyday life. Clark was involved in the design, including references to her childhood driveway and the way she plays.

That’s product creation, storytelling and business. Athletes are told they need sponsorships, an audience and a plan beyond competition. When their style helps people connect with them, that can be part of the work.

You cannot tell women athletes to become more marketable and then punish them for becoming culturally interesting.

Sometimes the clothes are performance

Nike’s custom speed suit for Olympic 800-meter champion Keely Hodgkinson brings this into focus. It’s full-length and hooded, with an open back, different fabrics and tiny 3D-printed vortex generators designed to reduce drag. Nike also designed openings for movement and temperature regulation, including one for her ponytail.

I love that detail. Somebody working on an elite racing suit also asked how the athlete actually wanted to compete. Fit, comfort, expression and performance were all part of the brief.

Athletes understand this instinctively. You have the competition outfit you like, the shoes you trust or the hairstyle you feel best competing in. Comfort matters. Confidence matters. Not being distracted by your uniform matters. Elite athletes spend their careers trying to control tiny details. Why would clothing be exempt?

Fandom has a wardrobe

There’s a bigger commercial opportunity here, too. Klarna and Sports Innovation Lab’s 2024 Rep Her report estimated a potential $4 billion annual U.S. market for women’s sports merchandise. In its U.S. survey, 79% of fans said they would buy more if more options were available.

People want to participate in the culture around sports. They buy the jersey, copy the tunnel fit and look for the sweatshirt that doesn’t seem to come from a sad corner of a stadium team store. Fashion is one of the ways fandom becomes identity.

Men’s sports have benefited from that for decades. Think about Yankees hats, Jordans and soccer jerseys as streetwear. We understand that those products can carry meaning beyond a particular game. Women’s sports deserves room to build that kind of cultural presence, too.

The point is having a choice

I don’t want the takeaway to be that every woman athlete needs to become a fashion girl. Absolutely not.

Naomi Osaka wants to walk onto a Grand Slam court in couture. Awesome. Another athlete wants to arrive in sweatpants with wet hair. Also awesome. An athlete who hates fashion, social media and personal branding should still be valued. We can’t replace one expectation with another.

The point is agency. Women athletes should get to decide what their athletic identity looks like. Sports can enforce timing rules and uniform standards while leaving room for self-expression. Disliking an outfit is one thing; treating it as proof that a woman isn’t serious about her sport is another.

The interesting question about Osaka’s dress isn’t whether you liked it. Fashion is subjective. It’s what it means that people cared: designers wanted to collaborate, publications covered it and fans had opinions.

I think that’s a sign of an athlete becoming more culturally powerful. Naomi can care about winning a Grand Slam and her entrance outfit. Keely can care about aerodynamics and a ponytail opening. Caitlin can want a shoe that performs at the highest level and apparel people wear to brunch.

None of those things cancels the others out. Maybe fashion is one more sign that women athletes are getting to shape the game on their own terms.

Explore Athlete, Actually for more conversations about the athletes, fans, culture and business shaping women’s sports.