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Last night, during a pause in the action at this year’s GQ Men of the Year bar party at the Chateau Marmont, the throng gathered around the DJ booth for our annual tradition: the awarding of the Big Fit of the Night medal.
This year’s stakes were a little different—the party’s theme was American Rodeo, and we asked our guests to dress in their best “Hollywood Western” gear. In a year when cowboycore controlled our wardrobes and the music charts, it felt like the perfect time to giddy up, sartorially speaking.
GQ global editorial director Will Welch invited “the great, beautiful, and extremely fly Naomi Osaka” to the booth to receive her Big Fit medal. The boundary-pushing pro-tennis player is already a fashion rebel.
For GQ’s American Rodeo, Osaka dressed in a relaxed white shirt, a loose black leather necktie, and studded black trousers. She wore her hair down in long, blond-flecked braids and accessorized with a black felt hat and tobacco-toned suede cowboy boots by Havva.
After Osaka removed her wide-brimmed hat so Welch could wrap the medal around her neck, Welch requested the tennis champion to say a few words.
“I don’t know if you should trust me with a microphone in my hand,” quipped the refreshingly candid tennis champion. She praised Mike Amiri’s namesake company, which designed her outfit, as well as the other partygoers’ impressive sartorial efforts. “I was evaluating everyone’s clothing and everyone looks wonderful,” she informed me.”
But Osaka, whose 2024 return to the courts after giving birth to her and Cordae’s first child last year was frequently disrupted by injuries and tantrums, had one more zinger for the audience.
“It feels great to win a medal this year,” she said, laughing as the audience roared. And that’s something we can all celebrate.
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