“I really do love fashion. I love makeup. I love that type of thing,” – American star Coco Gauff has time and again, revealed her passion for fashion. Recently, we saw the WTA stars enlightening the official photoshoot for the 2024 WTA Finals with their stunning outfits. While Aryna Sabalenka, wore a black off-the-shoulder outfit designed by Christopher Esber, Iga Swiatek donned a demure powder blue gown! The young American star was seen in a stunning lavender-colored one-piece outfit during the photoshoot. Recently, Gauff spoke about why she wanted to do that.

Well, this WTA Finals outfit was designed by a Saudi designer who has also previously designed clothes for Beyonce. Speaking about her reason for picking this particular outfit, Coco Gauff said, “Yeah, I thought it would be cool to first just highlight a designer from here. His name is Yousef Akbar, He’s won an award. I think the dress is featured on the cover of Vogue Arabia. He’s dressed Beyonce and all these crazy celebrities.“

In 2020, Yousef Akbar won the esteemed Fashion Trust Arabia Eveningwear Prize. Apart from Beyonce, other notable personalities who have previously donned his exclusively designer outfits include Sharon Stone, Alicia Keys, Rita Ora, and many more. Speaking more about this gorgeous outfit, Coco Gauff said,

“First, it was an honor to be able to wear this dress. They had a couple of versions of this dress. It was not my size. I’m very lucky it fit me and he was willing to let me wear it for this shoot, trust me with that. For me, it’s really important to highlight that. I’m happy with how the photos turned out. The dress looked great on me. I think also Arab designers do the gowns and draping the best, to be honest.”

After seeing this stunning outfit on her daughter, Coco Gauff‘s mother, Candi took to IG and shared two pictures, the first one captioned, “@cocogauff stunning!!” and in the second one she wrote, “@cocogauff gorgeous ❤️❤️❤️.”

With all the controversies that we’ve seen surrounding Saudi’s involvement in the racquet sport, perhaps now the fans from that part of the world would be happy to see a top WTA player donning an outfit designed by their native designer. Coco Gauff shared a few thoughts on the same.

Previously, we saw the likes of tennis legends, including Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, heavily criticizing Saudi Arabia’s involvement in women’s tennis. They even asked the WTA Tour whether “staging a Saudi crown-jewel tournament would involve players in an act of sports washing merely for the sake of a cash influx.”

However, despite all these, WTA signed a three-year deal with the Saudi Tennis Federation to stage its season finale in Riyadh. The first edition will kick off at the King Saud University Indoor Arena on Saturday (November 2). Speaking about all these murmurs before this mega event, Coco Gauff said, “Obviously, I’m very aware of the situation here in Saudi. My view on it is I do think that sport can have a way to open doors to people. I think in order to want change, you have to see it. I think sports for me, I would say, is the easiest way to introduce that.”

She further added, “I would be lying to you if I said I had no reservations. I was pretty much on every player call I could make with the WTA. One of the things I said, if we come here, we can’t just come here and play our tournament and leave. We have to have a real program or real plan in place.”

Gauff even revealed that she had a conversation with Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US, in which she asked questions about LGBTQ+ and women’s rights in the country. She further claimed, “It’s one of those things where I want to see it for myself, see if the change is happening.” Was Gauff’s decision to choose a Saudi designer, rather than one from another country, motivated by a desire to highlight talent from this region?