Tennis star Naomi Osaka had a lot of fun at the 2025 US Open. Throughout the tournament, Osaka donned custom Nike outfits in jewel-toned shades, and when her longtime hairstylist Marty Harper saw the looks, he was inspired.
“We are always merging showmanship and functionality,” Harper says of the looks Osaka wore during the games. The two first met at a photoshoot, and have worked together for just over five years. “Naomi can come off as very stoic or reserved at first,” he reflects, “but once you get her to open up, you realize she’s simply one of the most tremendous humans ever.”
While the looks the duo created together for the French Open were “cute,” Harper shares that they wanted something a bit more serious for the U.S. tournament. It was a rose motif in the Nike looks that first got Harper’s mind flowing. Then, an inspiration from a much less likely source: a visit to the legendary Parisian cabaret show, Crazy Horse. “I was in Paris watching the Crazy Horse show, and there’s a part in it where everybody was wearing glittering hair accessories. That’s when I realized, ‘We need the roses crystallized.’”
“This look had a nod to Naomi’s Afro-Haitian roots with the curly hair texture, as well as a little bit of Harajuku as well,” hairstylist Marty Harper says.
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“This was a really pretty look for Naomi,” Harper says. “I wanted the roses to be cascading through.”
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From there, things moved quickly. Harper’s friend, fellow hairstylist Clayton Hawkins, suggested professional bedazzler Kerin Rose Gold of A-Morir Studios for the job. They started with Gold 3-D printing the roses in a handful of different sizes before the perfect bouquet emerged. And then came the Labubus. Osaka delighted fans with an entourage of punny Labubus: Billie Jean Bling, Arthur Flashe, LaBillieBu, Althea Glitterson, and Andre Swaggassi, all in collaboration with A-Morir and in keeping with the Naomi Osaka school of style and attitude.
“I wanted to create these ornate, crown-like beauty moments for Naomi,” Harper says. “All I was thinking of was ‘let Naomi come and get her roses.’ Naomi has journeyed: she’s a champion, she speaks for women, she speaks for mental health, she does it for mothers, as well as doing it for herself. She’s opened the door for a lot of young women.”
For the final look, Harper called upon braider Tiana Amani to create the stitch braid cornrows. From there, he created different ponytail hair pieces that Osaka could wear for the walk-on, but easily remove when the game actually started. Each of the ponytails had a different texture—loose and curly, long locs—and were finished off with roses affixed to chopsticks.
