US Open Courtside Style, and How to Wear It This Autumn

The US Open finished on Sunday. Two weeks in Queens, from the first Sunday on 30 August to the final on 13 September, and by the end the stands had settled into a dress code nobody wrote down. Collars. Pleated minis. A cardigan over the top of everything. New York has never had a whites rule, so what happens courtside sits closer to street style than sportswear, and this year it landed somewhere genuinely buyable.

Butter yellow was the brightest thing on court

Coco Gauff played the tournament in a pale butter yellow New Balance kit against a blue hard court, roughly the maximum contrast a colour can manage. Butter yellow has been on the high street since spring, and most of what is left of it now is knitwear, which suits September a lot better than it suited July. One yellow piece, everything under it dark, and that is the whole formula.

On court

Coco Gauff's butter yellow kit

Pale yellow crop top, black shorts, pale yellow trainers picking the top back up, and nothing else in the outfit competing for attention. Two colours, so it still registers from the back of the stand. The off-court translation swaps the crop for a soft yellow knit and keeps everything below it black.

Matched by visual searchNrbelex / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Style this look with our stylist

Shop yellow tops

The white shirt dress was the courtside default

Scroll any gallery from the fortnight and the same dress appears four or five times over. Alexandra Daddario in white cotton, Avantika in a crisp white midi, Sunisa Lee in a white collared dress, Hannah Berner in a white collared top and skirt set. It survives eleven hours of sun, a queue for a honey deuce and dinner afterwards, with no change of outfit in between. That is a lot to ask of one dress, and this is the one that manages it.

Pleated minis, worn as a set

Remy Ma wore a pleated skirt with a crop top. Lexi Minetree wore a navy crop and a pleated mini with striped trim. Becky G wore a grey collared top with a matching mini. Two pieces rather than one dress, and the reason a set outlasts the tournament is that you can split it: the skirt with a heavy jumper in November, the top with jeans.

Polo collars, knitted

Not the rugby polo. The fine gauge knitted one, short sleeved, collar sitting flat. It has been creeping through the shops all year and courtside is where it finally clicked, because it manages sporty and smart in the same top. With a mini it is tenniscore. With tailored trousers it is just a good top.

The cardigan did all the layering

Simone Biles wore a cream zip cardigan with a mini. Coco Rocha wore black tweed with shorts and tights. Olivia Palermo zipped a black one over a draped midi skirt. Nobody wore a coat, because New York was still sitting in the high twenties, so the cardigan took the entire job. A British September needs exactly that.

Navy and brown instead of black

Black showed up less than you would expect. Rachel Zegler in a navy sleeveless midi, Lana Condor in a navy jumper over plaid, Lexi Minetree in navy again. Da’Vine Joy Randolph wore chocolate brown with a matching belt, Bailee Madison a brown silk top and trousers. Navy and brown have taken over black’s old job for daytime dressing, and both are kinder under a hard afternoon sun.

Tenniscore has been around long enough to stop counting as a microtrend, and the sportier ribbon-and-trainers end of it got its own edit here: Blokette: Tenniscore's Sporty-Girly Cousin. Courtside is the grown-up version of the same references, in better fabrics, with no racket required. Stock on this moves quickly, so if a piece is right, take it now rather than in three weeks.