Inside the Vanity Fair cover story with Carlos Alcaraz
I spoke to VF's style correspondent, José Criales-Unzueta, about profiling Carlos Alcaraz and the making of that magnetic cover.
When Vanity Fair released three different covers for its Sports Issue yesterday and Carlos Alcaraz rightfully made the cut, it felt like a long overdue moment for this generation of tennis to fully pierce the cultural mainstream. Shot by Ethan James Green, the cover features Alcaraz covered in clay with his arms behind his head and a cheeky grin, as if he’s welcoming the viewer to come closer. To put it bluntly, the cover is sexy, as the many Alcaraz fan accounts made clear while digitally drooling over the imagery yesterday. And tennis is in dire need of a little sex! Sure, we saw Alcaraz strip down to his Calvins in the “Calvins or nothing” campaign from 2023—an ode to his proverbial ancestor Rafa Nadal’s Tommy Hilfiger campaigns of yore—but things have otherwise been pretty chaste.
Sex, to be clear, doesn’t mean turning tennis players into would-be OnlyFans stars (no disrespect to Alexandre Müller, keep doing your thing!) or giving fans license to be creepy. It simply means—in media and advertising—having a little FUN with the reality that many people find these formidable athletes magnetic. Because being really good at what you do is hot, even if the Royal Box is watching on. The sport could use a little loosening up, and covers like this understand something tennis often forgets: athletic dominance and allure have always gone hand in hand.
The brilliance of this cover and accompanying story sparked my interest so much that I reached out to Vanity Fair’s style correspondent, José Criales-Unzueta, who interviewed Alcaraz for the piece and was on set during the Miami Open. We spoke about trying to unearth who Alcaraz is beyond the showman we see on court, the goals behind the shoot, what José learned about him through the reporting process, and what it was like being on the clay-filled set. It’s a fun one.
