Tennis champion Naomi Osaka has for years made the tennis court a runway, with her Nike outfits often paired with pieces made in collaboration with designers such as Hana Yagi and Robert Wun. Her next staple piece: one she’s designed herself.
Such is the brand of luxury leather goods Osaka unveiled Friday at the Fame to Fortune Summit, a daylong conference organized by the affluent community-building organization Uncharted that aimed to connect celebrities flirting with potential business ideas with investors eager to fund them. Osaka showcased a prototype of one of her handbag creations during a chat alongside her business partner Mike Cherman, the founder of the Los Angeles streetwear line Chinatown Market, in which she called the brand her “biggest dream” outside of tennis.
“Being a really good tennis player has given me a lot of amazing opportunities to invest and also just to surround myself with some really great people and I feel like that’s gotten me to this point where I want to create my own thing,” Osaka told Fortune‘s executive editorial director Diane Brady during the fireside chat, which also served as a pitch to potential investors in the crowd. “It’s something that I want to pour all my energy into because I believe in it too with all my heart.”
