The Glossy 50 honors the year’s biggest changemakers across fashion and beauty. More from the series →
No one does tenniscore fashion quite like Morgan Riddle. When attending Wimbledon in July, the content creator donned a frilly green vintage Valentino two-piece that, as Riddle captioned on her Instagram post of the fit, made her look like “a giant tennis ball.”
“When my stylist had sent it to me, I was like, ‘I don’t know about this,’” Riddle recalled. “And then we got it on and we tailored it, and it was, I think, my favorite outfit that I’ve ever worn to a tennis match.”
That’s saying a lot, considering Riddle spends almost the entire year attending tennis matches around the world. Riddle has risen to prominence as one of the preeminent “WAGs” of a new era, where wives and girlfriends of famous athletes are increasingly building their own brands and careers on social media. After she began dating Taylor Fritz, who will end 2025 as the sixth-ranked men’s singles tennis player in the world, in 2020, Riddle has carved out a niche as an accessible insider to the world of elite tennis.
Riddle began posting behind-the-scenes takes on the tennis world while on tour with Fritz in 2022 and has since attracted brand partners like Dior Beauty and FP Movement, taken on gigs as a correspondent for the likes of Wimbledon and Who What Wear, and grown her audience to more than 1 million followers across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Her followers run the gamut from those excited to see her tennis fits to those looking for glimpses of on-court action.
“I really grew my audience on the tennis side, talking about the BTS of tennis. But now, I have so many people who follow me and don’t really know anything about tennis, but are learning about the sport through the content,” said Riddle. “I package tennis in a bit of a feminine aesthetic way. I guess it’s like a Trojan horse into becoming an actual fan of the sport.”
The influence of figures like Riddle goes beyond tennis. Organizations like the NFL and the NBA are waking up to the value of crossovers into fashion and beauty as they seek to reach female fans. In November, Sephora was announced as the official fragrance partner for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, and Mielle was named the NFL’s first official textured hair-care partner that same month.
“There are so many sports bringing in women and making it a better experience overall for women,” she said. “I got to interview a couple of women on the corporate side of the Vikings [NFL team, who said] a huge mission of the Minnesota Vikings right now is to make their live sporting events more welcoming for women, because it’s a majority part of the fan base now.”
How to make a long-term career out of content creation is still an evolving equation for countless influencers like Riddle. Though best known for short-form video content, Riddle ventured into long-form writing with the May launch of a Substack that features recommendations from her travels around the world. But she sees her most valuable influence as going beyond the content that pays her bills.
“The most satisfying part to me is not making more money or getting more followers, but I get these really special messages and DMs from girls that say things like, ‘I watched your YouTube video, and I decided to take a solo trip to Barcelona for a week,’ and ‘You gave me the confidence and the courage to do my own trip,’” she said. “And those sorts of things make me feel that my content is actually meaningful, and I’m not just peddling products.”
