My husband is a rare human; it takes a lot for me to rattle him, but somehow, this year, I’ve already managed to annoy him just a little. In the middle of our summer family holiday, an invitation arrived from Gucci to an intimate dinner in Melbourne with their Global Brand Ambassador and World No. 2 tennis player, Jannik Sinner, on the eve of the Australian Open. My husband’s love for tennis runs deep, and his admiration for the ‘new guard’ is even deeper, so negotiating my extraction from the family holiday was likely to provoke some hostility.
After a series of logistical gymnastics and marital promises, I arrived in Melbourne, still very much in a holiday state of mind. An hour later, walking into the beautiful heritage building that houses the bar and eatery, Reine & La Rue, on Melbourne’s Collins Street, I was quickly reminded of how lucky I am to be afforded such incredible opportunities.
Within 10 minutes of arriving, I was introduced to the man of the evening. Sinner is tall, though not quite as towering as he appears on court, smooth and utterly charming. For a 24-year-old, he’s incredibly comfortable conversing; our discussions went far and wide, from his tennis rivalries and his friendship with World No. 1, c. Rivalries and respect, and how the two coexist. Carlos, he said, is absolutely still an opponent, friendship notwithstanding. It has to be that way. Having just got off a long-haul flight from the northern hemisphere, we moved on to travel, the universal misery of airports, regardless of where you are sitting on the plane, and, for Sinner, his increasing recognisability, creating chaos with eager fans. The upside, it turns out, is that when tournament schedules overlap, he and Carlos now share a private jet. A practical solution, if ever there was one.
With a life of constant travel, I was curious whether he had a girlfriend — yes, he does — but he admitted to the challenges of maintaining a relationship while competing at his level of tennis. I offered some unsolicited advice about relationships being all about timing, and him having plenty of time on his side.
We then discussed the uniqueness of tennis, the mental load of the sport, and how much of it is about reading people rather than simply hitting balls. Patterns, habits, instincts. “It’s like chess,” I said. He agreed.
The draw for the Australian Open was being announced the following morning, so I asked if he felt nervous. In what I was beginning to recognise as classic Sinner behaviour, he shrugged it off. “It’s not nerves”, he said, “it’s information”. Once you know who you’re playing, you can work out your strategy. Each opponent brings a different style, a different nuance. The key is outsmarting them while staying true to your own game. I asked about the risk of an early exit, because tennis has a habit of humbling even the best. He laughed. “No problemo.” And with only the semi-finals remaining, things are looking great for an Australian Open final match against his friend and foe, Carlos Alcaraz.
For dinner, Sinner had swapped his tournament uniform for a head-to-toe Gucci look that felt perfectly aligned with him: crisp, controlled, and quietly bold. The kind of elegance that doesn’t announce itself. Fashion is its own discipline, after all; another form of preparation. And this season, Gucci’s mood is unmistakably shifting under Demna, sharper, more referential, more charged, as was apparent upon the bright talent that also joined us for dinner; all wearing the newly released La Familia Collection, now available in boutiques. It’s most definitely a bright new chapter for Gucci, and seeing Sinner wear it, you could feel the point being made: performance and style don’t have to live in different rooms.
Then came the delicious postscript. The announcement that World No. 1 women’s tennis player Aryna Sabalenka, too, is joining the Gucci family is a power move that’s a perfect alignment. Gucci has officially arrived at centre court.
