What Does Your US Open Invitation Say About You?

It started around Labor Day. Grainy, zoomed-in videos of Coco Gauff running around Arthur Ashe Stadium. Photos of chicken nuggets covered in caviar being eaten with the nonchalance of a ham-and-cheese Lunchable. TikToks—too much TikTok—women in white minidresses 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 on. “To the U.S. Open.” (#foryou.)

The annual Grand Slam tennis tournament has been held in Queens every September since 1968. But this year, the event’s reach has reached fever pitch. Part of that is due to the tournament’s record-breaking average daily attendance of 75,000. But part of it is also due to a slew of brands paying for a box or block of tickets, then inviting influencers, celebrities, and fashion editors to attend and share on social media. The result? It seems like everyone is at the US Open this week.

Except me.

Oh yeah. It’s me. Fashion His colleagues all shared some variation of Arthur Ashe’s “thank you” on their Instagram stories add company here Thanks for inviting me!” I haven’t received one yet singular invitation. Play the world’s smallest violin. (No “but” here. This is an insensitive and completely irrelevant issue that I can only attribute to a failure of character development on my part.) Still, as I scroll through the endless stream of Flushing Meadows each night, I wonder: How can I be relevant and interesting enough to be considered a cultural tastemaker for luxury heritage companies like Ralph Lauren or Rolex?

But then I decide I don’t have the energy for all that, and instead I get deeply cynical. So below I’ve recorded my wildly hypothetical snap judgments about what your US Open box or brand invitation says about you. I wrote this while sitting alone on my couch next to a soggy bowl of unfinished Sweetgreen. So if this all sounds like the jealous ramblings of a madman, that’s because it absolutely is.

Sporty and Rich

Hailey Bieber is your style icon, and you captioned your latest Instagram carousel with a cleverly disguised thirst trap: “so careful, so reserved.” In five years, you’ll be caught in an FTC sting for failing to disclose sponsored content.

Brighter

You describe yourself as a girl boss with 30,000 Instagram followers but a lifestyle brand that made $30,000 in negative profit this year. I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that the Restoration Hardware Cloud Couch is a splurge, but well It’s worth it. You definitely didn’t get Botox, which isn’t technically a lie: Your Upper East Side dermatologist injected you with Dysport.

J.Crew

Brat Summer never made it into your TikTok algorithm, but Demure Fall did. You tell everyone how much you love the city, but when your financier boyfriend drops a three-carat diamond ring on you, you’re going to move to the suburbs. Your darkest secret is that it was grown in a lab.

Ralph Lauren

You’re a celebrity, and this is a press stop between appearances at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. Otherwise, you’re someone who dresses like they know how to ride a horse, even though the only spending you’ve done lately has been on your credit card. You can trace all your insecurities back to being waitlisted at Dartmouth.*

Emirates

You go to amfAR Cannes every year and pay for your table. One time, a friend of a friend brought a former Victoria’s Secret model along. You texted for a few days, but when you arrived at the Port of Saint Tropez, she left you as read.

Dobel Tequila

I moved to Miami during the pandemic and told everyone New York was dead but you’re still here like every weekend. Follow the Winklevoss twins on Instagram. They don’t follow you back.

Grey Goose

The first mead catches a little in your throat, a sweet, satisfying burn as the alcohol trickles down. By the third, you can’t taste anything. You raise your iPhone high, taking out out-of-focus photos of the railings at Arthur Ashe Stadium. A rally between two top-ranked players is taking place. But you don’t watch. Instead, you type and delete Instagram story captions over and over again. Each one feels duller than the last: “Deuces at Deuce.” “Double (Shooting) Error.” “Coded Challengers.” You pause. “Melons? It looks more like melon-choly!” Then, when you’re left alone, you start laughing out loud.