Maya Joint, a 20-year-old Australian tennis player, spent just 70 minutes on court as she fell in the first round of Roland Garros. It was more than enough time for the redhead to deliver the tournament’s first fashion statement in her wraparound Oakley sunglasses. These glasses have been a signature for Joint. They make her look somewhere between a skeet shooter and a “Star Trek” background character.
On Monday, as temperatures reached the low 90s in Paris, there was something cinematic about watching the court’s hot red clay reflect off Joint’s blue-tint lenses. Over the past several years, the tentacles of luxury fashion have pulled tighter around pro tennis. Aryna Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner, the respective women’s and men’s world No. 1s, have Gucci deals in common. (The online publication Sportico reported this week that there was scuttlebutt over whether these two were allowed by the tournaments to carry Gucci handbags onto court. Sabalenka, conspicuously, was Gucci-less as she took to the court in Paris.)
Naomi Osaka, still feeling her way through a return to the top of the women’s game, is the player most apt to treat her on-court arrival like a red carpet premiere. On Tuesday, she appeared for her first-round match in a custom gown by the “upcycled couture” designer Kevin Germanier. As she walked to the bench, her capacious train swept the court’s clay.
Such flourishes are dispensed with once a match begins. Osaka, unzipped down to her stock Nike kit, albeit one in gladiatorial gold with an abundance of sequins.
And this is why I find Joint’s look so winsome. She is not, as far as I can tell, sponsored by Oakley. She wears glasses because she needs them.
“I just find it so bright outside — I don’t know how other people can see,” she said earlier this year. If Joint is an outlier on the court, she has a compatriot in Princess Anne, who for more than a decade has been photographed in a pair of incongruous Adidas wraparound frames. Her helmet hairdo, her genteel scarves, her tweedy coats — they could be from 50 years ago. But those reflective glasses? They’re still something of the future.
They also flirt with bad taste. This is certainly why Demna made sport sunglasses a cornerstone of his thumb-in-the-eye, dystopian mélange at Balenciaga.
It’s endearing to see a royal like Princess Anne in glasses similar to what you’d see hanging on the rack at a gas station for $10. Almost every “tasteful” style of sunglasses on the market these days is a reference of a reference, each Ray-Ban style or new pair of Saint Laurent shades just trading on a design of the past.
But wraparounds are not that. They don’t “go” with anything. They are so anti-fashion that they tip over into fashion.
Other things worth knowing about:
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One last tennis style note for now: Converse has really slipped into irrelevancy in the sneaker wars, so it was notable that Sinner wore a pair of its Jack Purcells as he received the Italian Open trophy last week.
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Alysa Liu, championship figure skater, Chrome Hearts fan.
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Near the close of Cannes, the Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve wore a greige Ami suit that Stellan Skarsgard had worn a day or so before. She posted it to Instagram with the caption “Still smells like daddy.” One for all the “Sentimental Value” heads out there.
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The World Cup style wars are underway. Loewe announced Tuesday that it’s dressing the Spanish national team. The outfits, especially that bright blue polo, look good!
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I’m just saying, Harry Styles’s custom Calvin Klein outfit sure looks a lot like Celine.
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If you happen to be in Tokyo on Wednesday to Friday of the week, Kids Love Gaite, the monstrous in the best way shoe brand that I profiled last year, is having an archive sale. Expect shoes with teeth and shoes with other shoes stitched on them.
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
The post The Case for Ugly-Cool Sunglasses appeared first on New York Times.
