Because Osaka was playing on an outside court, the former world number one had to be escorted through the crowds to her match.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, many unsuspecting fans could not help but stop and take in Osaka’s latest fashion statement as the 28-year-old passed them on the walkway.<\/p>\n
“From my end, I thought that was really fun just because I didn’t think anyone expected that,” Osaka said.<\/p>\n
“I try to lock in a little bit and wear my headphones. I could feel when I walked by someone, they would physically turn their whole body. I thought that was really fun.<\/p>\n
“It was cool because I heard some people say, Wow, that’s a really beautiful kimono and stuff like that. So it was nice.”<\/p>\n
Osaka said she preferred to “shake things up” when asked if she would wear the kimono before her other matches at Wimbledon, with Russian Anastasia Gasanova up next.<\/p>\n
Osaka has re-established herself in the world’s top 20 since the birth of her daughter in 2023, and reached the semi-finals at last year’s US Open.<\/p>\n
But she has never gone beyond the third round at Wimbledon – and said that wearing such outfits can bring added pressure.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t say it eases my nerves to wear these outfits because a little part of my mind wants to do well so I can continue wearing them,” Osaka said.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, like for the French Open, you don’t want to wear a ball gown and lose in the first round. That does cross my mind a little bit.”<\/p>\n
She added: “It’s something that I’m used to doing, wearing these extravagant outfits. <\/p>\n
“I feel like everyone has their own way of showing that they’re into fashion. I’m always really surprised whenever I go to the locker room, I get a lot of questions about it. It seems to be fun for everyone. You just wouldn’t expect it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Because Osaka was playing on an outside court, the former world number one had to be escorted through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-524860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}