“I’m in between,” he says. “It depends a little bit on the shoe and a little bit on the weather. Sometimes when they are too small, they make me feel funny. Today, I’m wearing sockettes, as you can see. I used to wear a 46, my correct size, and would be dying at the end of the day. I thought, why am I doing this? Now, I go one size bigger and wear a 47, and only buy [shoes that are] comfortable.”
It’s fitting that comfort holds such importance, even for a man so renowned for his fashion, as it does for so many of us these days. We still wear trainers to the office and prefer our polo shirts and trousers to come with stretch. “It’s incredible how we’ve ended up in this place of working from home more, being comfortable, wondering if we really have to wear a suit jacket on Fridays, or whether we can come into the office looking looser,” muses Federer. “But we don’t want to come in looking completely casual. It’s not easy to put that sort of look together. That’s why a lot of people in the workplace need very strict rules. Otherwise, it gets crazy.”
In 2026, we’re as exacting about our leisurewear as we are about our tailoring. Perhaps Federer, 44, sensed this instinctively when he signed up to work with Uniqlo rather than a design house like his former tennis rivals (Jannik Sinner works with Gucci, Lorenzo Musetti with Bottega Veneta and Carlos Alcaraz with Louis Vuitton). Since joining in 2018, he has collaborated on collections that give its minimalist, functional clothing a design-led yet sporty edge.