It started around Labor Day. Grainy, zoomed-in videos of Coco Gauff sprinting around the Arthur Ashe Stadium. Photos of caviar-smothered chicken nuggets, eaten with the nonchalance of a ham and cheese Lunchable. Tiktoks—so many Tiktoks—of women in white mini-dresses and Golden Goose sneakers. “Come with me,” they say, their curls bouncing to the tune of whatever generic TikTok song their vocal fry can be heard over. “To the US Open.” (#foryou.)
The annual Grand Slam tennis tournament has taken place in Queens every September since 1968. This year, however, the event’s reach has hit a fever pitch. Part of it is thanks to the tournament averaging a record 75,000 attendees per day. But part of it is also because a number of brands have paid for a box—or a multi-row block of tickets—then invited influencers, celebrities, and fashion editors to attend and post on social media about it. The result? Everyone, it seems, is at the US Open this week.
Except for me.
Oh yes. While my Vogue colleagues have all been Instagram-storying it up from Arthur Ashe with some variation of “thank you insert company here for inviting me!” I haven’t received one singular invitation. Cue the world’s tiniest violin. (I don’t have a “but” here. This is a tone-deaf and very out-of-touch problem, that I can only ascribe to a failure of character development on my part.) Yet, every night as I scroll through an endless feed of Flushing Meadows, I become introspective: how can I become relevant and interesting enough to be seen as a cultural tastemaker for luxury heritage companies like Ralph Lauren or Rolex?
But then I decide I don’t have the energy to do all that, and become deeply snarky instead. So below, I’ve chronicled my snap and wildly assumptive judgments about what your US Open box or brand invite says about you. I wrote this sitting alone on my couch next to a soggy bowl of unfinished Sweetgreen. So if they sound like the jealous rantings of a madwoman, it’s because they absolutely are.
Sporty & Rich
Hailey Bieber is your style icon and you captioned your last Instagram carousel with an artfully hidden thirst trap as “very mindful, very demure.” In five years, you will be caught up in a FTC sting operation for failing to disclose sponsored content.
Glossier
You’re a self-described girl boss with a lifestyle brand that has 30,000 Instagram followers but $30,000 dollars negative in profits this year. Will tell anyone who listens that Restoration Hardware Cloud Couch was a splurge, but sooo worth it. Adamant you’ve never gotten Botox, which isn’t technically a lie: your Upper East Side dermatologist injects you with Dysport.
J.Crew
Brat Summer never made it onto your Tiktok algorithm but Demure Fall sure did. You tell everyone how much you love the city, but you’ll decamp to the suburbs once your finance boyfriend puts a three-carat diamond ring on it. Your darkest secret is that its lab-grown.
Ralph Lauren
You are a celebrity and this is a press stop in between your appearances at Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. Otherwise, you are a person who dresses like you know how to ride a horse, even though the only charge you’ve made lately is to your credit card. You can trace back all your insecurities to getting waitlisted at Dartmouth.*
Emirates
You attend amfAR Cannes every year and actually pay for your table. Once, your friend’s friend brought a former Victoria’s Secret model along. You texted for a few days, but by the time you reached the Port of Saint Tropez, she had left you on read.
Dobel Tequila
Moved down to Miami during the pandemic and told everyone New York was dead but you still seem to be here every weekend. Follow the Winklevoss twins on Instagram. They don’t follow you back.
Grey Goose
The first honey deuce caught in your throat a bit, the alcohol a sweet, satisfying burn as it went down. By the third, you can’t taste anything at all. You raise it in the air and pull out your iPhone, taking out-of-focus pictures of the railings at the Arthur Ashe Stadium. There’s a rally going on between two top-ranked players. But you aren’t watching. Instead, you just write and delete Instagram story captions on repeat. Each feels lamer than the next: “Deuces at Deuce.” “Double (Shot) Fault.” “Challengers Coded.” You pause. “Melons? More like Melon-choly!” Then, all alone, you burst out laughing.
