QUEENS, NEW YORK — The hottest ticket at the US Open is perhaps not the President’s Suite box, or courtside seats at Billie Jean King stadium: It’s an invite to attend the private Julien Farel salon.
Operating stealthily at the US Open for 17 years, Farel, a French hairstylist with a plush Park Avenue salon, brings his team to Arthur Ashe stadium each year to tend to the locks of top players.
Dressed in an immaculate navy suit and pristine Golden Goose sneakers, Farel trims hair, dusts eyebrows and tidies fades, while behind him a row of manicurists daub Hermés nail polish onto a sea of players’ Oura-ring-wrapped fingers and talented toes.
Farel has been popping up for almost two decades, but he’s not alone any more. This year, the player goodie bag includes products from L’Oréal-owned drugstore skincare La Roche-Posay, Dove’s Hydration Boost Fresh Jasmine Bloom Body Wash as well as hair and face care products, fragrances from Polo Ralph Lauren and a lip serum from Mexican-owned cosmetics brand Aora Mexico. The UK facial chain FaceGym is also offering its sculpting sessions to interested players, according to a flyer sighted by The Business of Beauty. (The brand declined to comment on its involvement, citing confidentiality agreements.)
While tidying up the hair of Australian tennis ace Matthew Ebden — who contemplates, but decides against, a patriotic mullet — Farel says he has been in the salon since 5am, and will keep going until players are completing their last games late into evening.
While many brands seek to reach the throngs of fans coursing through the stadium — there are booths from the aforementioned La Roche-Posay, as well as other consumer brands like Moët and Chandon and Chase Bank — or tuning in at home, some are putting a closer lens on players, not punters. The goal is two-pronged: There’s the hope of appearing more organically in content created by top players, which is normally controlled by athletes’ agents for top dollar, and also to position their brands authentically alongside a new genre of tastemaker.
“Clients are so excited to see the players when they come into the main salon,” said Farel, saying that the stars he tends to at the pop-up can become regular clients. “They’re a different kind of celebrity to an actress or a model.”
Farel said running the pop-up salon is not a profitable endeavour — in fact, the cost of staffing and stocking it means he loses money — but he continually returns. There is a halo effect for his core hairstyling business, and currying favour with rising and established stars in the world of tennis is also worth its weight in gold: Farel said the salon books up each day within around 15 minutes of opening.
“It’s a market share play… I always feel like it’s good to be associated with a sport like this,” he said.
Tennis and Beauty’s Perfect Match
Tennis has long been considered a stylish sport. Affiliations with luxury brands like Rolex, Louis Vuitton and Audemars Piguet are long-standing, and the sport’s top players often grace the covers of fashion magazines or land plum ambassadorial roles — the UK’s Emma Raducanu has been in campaigns for Dior, while recent tennis Hall of Fame inductee Maria Sharapova has worked with Porsche and the upscale resort chain Aman. As wellness has become a more luxury preoccupation, any rarefied sport has become even more powerful as a marketing tool.
“The US Open is proving to be a very culturally interesting and powerful moment,” said Nour Tayara, co-founder and chief executive of Mexican plastic-free cosmetics maker Aora Mexico. “[By gifting], there’s this chance that Naomi [Osaka] or Coco [Gauff] might stumble upon our product,” he said.
Fortunately, convincing tennis players to dabble in the world of beauty and fashion is not a stretch. The American rising stars Peyton Stearns and Alycia Parks told People magazine they love Obagi moisturiser and Sol de Janeiro body mists respectively, while former US Open champion (and Vogue cover star) Coco Gauff has tagged the hair care brand Carol’s Daughter in her Instagram posts, and Australian pro Ajla Tomljanović has posted about her red carpet outfits from brands including Jacquemus and Reformation.
What can be more difficult is getting stars to talk about the brands they favour without a large cheque attached to it. Farel said the world of athlete management, which was historically made up of informal handshake or gentleman’s agreements, has changed rapidly in recent years. Even getting a mention on Instagram Story, which disappear in 24 hours, is unlikely to happen without serious negotiation with athletes’ representatives and agents, he said.
Rather than trying to out-spend the competition for paid placement, Farel is attempting to build a more organic relationship over time. It can be harder to quantify, and it might not have the immediate impact of a public partnership, but becoming associated with top players in a popular sport can confer other benefits — players associate him and his brand with relaxation and pampering, and they signal to his regular clients that the salon’s services are truly top notch.
Brands like Glossier and Maybelline have been using the US Open as a marketing tentpole for some years, taking editors to watch games, while La Roche Posay has been the official sunscreen sponsor since 2022. But now, the next level of activation is more organically getting onto the court.
It’s an asymmetrical bet, but Tayara said that even if there was a “one in 100″ chance that a player might be seen using Aora Mexico’s products or photographed with them, even a lesser-known player, it was worthwhile.
Paying to Play
While L’Oréal, La Roche-Posay’s parent business and the world’s largest beauty company, can afford to put players on its payroll (Jannik Sinner, ranked number one in the world, is its global sun safety ambassador), it’s also investing in a more organic way of reaching players at all levels: gifting.
In special goodie bags given to all competing players, the brand is gifting its Anthelios UV Pro Sport Sunscreen, Toleriane Purifying Cleanser and Double Repair SPF Facial Moisturiser and Lipikar AP+M Body Moisturiser. (There’s also sunscreen stations around the venue for fans, and a stash in the elite President’s Suite box and more for the ball boys and girls.)
“We enjoy the fact that our ambassadors are actual users of the product. There’s an authenticity to that,” said Patrick Sommers, L’Oréal’s director of offline, online and outdoor marketing, adding that it doesn’t only want to reach players solely because they are the “biggest or the best.”
Offering services and gifting complimentary products is taking a leaf out of the Hollywood playbook: attendees of high-level events like the Oscars have received increasingly extravagant gift “experiences” for years, which can include luxury holidays and even plastic surgery on top of fashion and beauty goods. It’s a way of getting the attention of top talent and possibly securing an official endorsement whilst also sidestepping the pay-to-play nature of working with agents.
As athletes grow their social media presences — Gauff has 2.2 million Instagram followers, Sinner some 4.4 million — and their crossover into lifestyle categories continues, more brands will likely follow in the hopes of getting their approval.
“Championship pedigree means something, but at the same time, having that authentic connection to promoting their usage is super important to us,” said Sommers.
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