Viewers of the splashy new U.S. Open mixed doubles championship taking place this week will see teams comprising some of tennis’s most recognizable stars: Carlos Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu; Taylor Fritz and Elena Rybakina; Frances Tiafoe and Madison Keys. They will also see familiar athletic brands.
Mr. Alcaraz, Ms. Keys and Ms. Raducanu are all paid to wear the Nike swoosh. Mr. Fritz has an apparel contract with Hugo Boss, Ms. Rybakina with Yonex and Mr. Tiafoe with Lululemon. Ben Shelton, the young American tennis star who is also in the competition, is sponsored by On.
His mixed-doubles partner, Taylor Townsend, recently became the No. 1 women’s doubles player in the world. But many people may not recognize the logo she is wearing.
Ms. Townsend, 29, has been playing without an official clothing sponsor since 2017, when her contract with Nike lapsed. This year, those closely following her on-court appearances might have noticed her in garments with an interlocking TT, the logo for a namesake apparel brand she has been developing.
After eight years of playing in clothes bought off the rack and without a sponsorship, Ms. Townsend decided “to do my own thing,” as she put it in an interview. She has enlisted the help of Talton Alexander-John Ballard, 45, a designer outside Atlanta who goes by Alexander-John, and who has worked with New Balance and Puma. “Similar to how Q works with James Bond — that’s how I feel to Taylor,” he said.
Ms. Townsend showcased her TT logo at this year’s French Open and Wimbledon tournaments. Using a heat-transfer process, Alexander-John affixed it to her store-bought dresses and long-sleeved tops to create customized gear. “That’s her Frankenstein collection,” he said jokingly. “We took what she had at the time and kind of pieced some things together.”
By last month’s Mubadala Citi DC Open in Washington, Alexander-John had whipped up a new set of outfits for Ms. Townsend featuring the logo and a gemstone motif. For the U.S. Open, where she is also playing in the singles and women’s doubles competitions, the pair designed several more ensembles around three themes.
For her first mixed-doubles match, Ms. Townsend plans to wear a kit inspired by orcas — an idea she got from a message that the actor Samuel L. Jackson, a tennis fan, sent her on Instagram about photos she shared during the DC Open. In one picture, taken after Ms. Townsend won a match, she was raising her hand above her head like a shark’s fin. In his message, Mr. Jackson told Ms. Townsend that she wasn’t a shark — she was an orca. (Killer whales, after all, are the ocean’s apex predators.)
The looks include a white dress with a pair of whales climbing up the sides of the bodice, and a crop top with a linear orca pattern near the midriff. What she chooses will depend on her mood and what her partner, Mr. Shelton, wears. “I will do what I can to match with him so we don’t look all over the place,” she said.
For her first singles match, Ms. Townsend plans to wear attire with a Tyrannosaurus rex theme — a tribute to her dinosaur-loving 4-year-old son. And for women’s doubles, Ms. Townsend, who will partner with Katerina Siniakova, plans to sport phoenix-inspired clothing: Her options include a black dress with embellishments that resemble glowing embers and a long-sleeved top with a flame print shooting up the arms.
“Every time that a phoenix is reborn, it has to burn itself to become new,” she said. “I’ve kind of been that throughout my career.”
Ms. Townsend, who last year reached a career high in singles at No. 46, grew up playing on public courts on the South Side of Chicago. After she became the top girls junior player in the world at 16, the United States Tennis Association told her it wouldn’t fund her travel to the U.S. Open unless she lost weight. (She made her own way to the tournament and won the junior doubles event.)
While a vast majority of top tennis players have some type of apparel partnership, whether it’s a multimillion-dollar deal or a handful of free outfits, Ms. Townsend is not unique in going without.
Hsieh Su-Wei, who has won seven women’s doubles Grand Slams, has played in off-the-rack looks for years. Zina Garrison, one of Ms. Townsend’s former coaches, was not sponsored for much of the 1980s, even after she reached No. 4 in the world in singles. (She finally got a contract with Reebok upon making the 1990 Wimbledon final, after playing throughout the tournament in clothes borrowed from Martina Navratilova.)
With her new venture, Ms. Townsend is following in the footsteps of another Black American star in this year’s U.S. Open: Venus Williams, who introduced her EleVen brand in 2007 and has since sold collections in partnership with K-Swiss and Lacoste.
And Serena Williams, Ms. Townsend said, is among her style influences. “She’s a curvy woman, I’m a curvy woman, so obviously we have to accentuate our body types and what makes us look good and what makes us feel good.” Ms. Townsend is known for not being shy about other players’ clothing choices: She recently chided Mr. Tiafoe, her friend, for looking like Ronald McDonald in the burgundy-and-gold ensemble he wore at the DC Open.
The goal of her fashion venture, she said, is to partner with a big apparel company that can bring it to retail, helping with manufacturing and distribution. There are no immediate plans to produce or sell the prototype designs Ms. Townsend has been wearing, but she will be offering a selection of branded merchandise, including T-shirts and hoodies, at an event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Aug. 22.
Like other athletes who have attempted branding endeavors, Ms. Townsend benefits from a built-in audience, including more than 100,000 followers on Instagram. Some fans are ready to become customers.
“I’m going to buy her clothes because I want to support her, and because I’m going to feel empowered wearing them,” said Mel Barrett, a 49-year-old journalist in Bethesda, Md. “I think it’s just sort of a big middle finger to these corporations who have decided what somebody is supposed to look like if they’re a pro tennis player.”
Cynthia Agyeman-Anane, 42, who owns a therapy practice in Severna Park, Md., admires how Ms. Townsend “stepped out and trusted herself,” she said. “I relate to her as a mom, as a business owner, as a Black woman.”
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