Mejuri Wants to Bring Jewellery Back to Sports

No sport is more associated with fine jewellery than tennis — and ahead of the US Open, Mejuri is doubling down on that affiliation.

The DTC fine-jewellery brand is collaborating with Racquet, an independent sports magazine focused on tennis, to launch a limited-edition magazine featuring the professional and amateur players, including recently signed brand ambassador Emma Navarro, McCartney Kessler, 16-year-old rising star Thea Frodin, Stanford freshman Valerie Glozman and UNC commit Anna Frey.

All will be present at different Mejuri events throughout the US Open’s opening week in New York City. Mejuri is partnering with Made Some Sportswear to create a US Open capsule collection that will launch on Mejuri’s website as well as the Air Mail outpost in New York City’s West Village. The magazine itself will be given away for free at Air Mail, as well as all of Mejuri’s physical locations.

“It’ll be a very busy week for us,” Jacob Jordan, Mejuri’s chief brand officer, said about the US Open, which officially starts on Aug. 24. “If you’ve ever been to New York during the time of the tournament, it’s like a cultural event that takes over the city.”

This is a major initiative from the company’s new arm, Mejuri Play, which was unveiled in late June, and aims to establish a community for female athletes under the Mejuri umbrella.

Part of the goal with Mejuri Play is to bring back together sports and jewellery, which used to have a massive presence throughout the sports industry. From the 1960s through the early 2000s, some of the most prestigious athletes across sports would be pictured wearing chains, rings, bracelets, watches and more.

Cut to today, and jewellery is banned by some of the most popular leagues in the world, including Formula 1, the English Premier League, the NBA and more. Some leagues have less specific rules against jewellery, like the NFL, which only bans players from wearing “hard objects” during play, but it is still taboo to wear anything glitzy while playing. That’s why Odell Beckham Jr. wearing a $190,000 Richard Mille watch on the field turned so many heads in 2019.

Mejuri is focusing on tennis because it’s one of the few sports whose players have been allowed to embrace jewellery. There are obvious foundational pieces, like the tennis bracelet, that have been around for years, but lately, players have been pushing boundaries and stacking necklaces, earrings and bracelets.

“There are all these moments, whether it’s Chris Evert or Agassi or Serena and Venus, [Frances Tiafoe] and some of the kit that he’s worn, Naomi Osaka and even Emma [Navarro] with these very loud ear stacks and necklaces,” Jordan said. “There’s something about tennis as a sport that’s really interesting.”