By definition, the location-within-a-location of Roland Garros — which stadium we shouldn’t need to recall is very much in Paris — makes everybody look their iconic best, very much including American tennis great Venus Williams and her Italian/Danish husband Andrea Preti. The couple are summery, crisp and cool — black polka dots on a tennis-white ground for her, and grounded earth tones for him — at the Berrettini/Arnaldi match on June 3. That hazy yellow orb flying between the camera and Williams’ gorgeously regal face is a volley rocketing camera left. It is, after all, the French Open.

We’re running this excellent shot by Agence France Presse’s Dimitar Dilkoff for a reason: Note how he precisely captured the as-yet unretired tennis champion’s eyes. As the decades of her toughest court battles have schooled her, she’s looking in front of the ball — in effect, where the shot’s headed, not where it is or was — to afford more nanoseconds for computing what sort of havoc it will wreak when it lands. That’s a great tennis player watching a tennis match, a Zen moment of pure understanding.

Speaking of airborne objects, Mathieu Forget — aka, forgetmat — is a balletic French photographer and anti-gravity practitioner whose gift is to retain his ultracalm demeanor while launching himself into various postures of “levitated” suspension for the camera. Pictured above uncharacteristically photographed by another shooter — in this case, WireImage’s Pierre Suu — Forget usually sets his shutter on a timer and photographs himself. But in this case, knowing he’s having his red-carpet moment at Roland Garros, Forget hops up and performs one of his aerial semi-yogic moves for Suu, seeming to relax on an imaginary stool while thumbing through a copy of his recently published book, entitled, aptly, Levitation. The book can be read with an augmented-reality app, as available on an iphone. In a word, yes: the French Open can easily be torqued as an ideal advertisement for yourself. But it can be a bit cumbersome! Even if it’s a massive coffee-table tome as Monsieur Forget’s is, you must schlepp your wares with you so as to have them handy for the thronging paparazzi. No moss gathering on Monsieur Forget as he does this, by the way. Is he quick? Well, yes, sort of, in the sense that he seems always to be able to get his feet back under him after the shutter clicks. We hope.

May we posit that iconic French wit and filmmaker Didier Bourdon married above his station? Probably not a good idea. It could cause a lot of trouble to state something like that as a fact because it would question his (in France) unquestionably lofty iconography, which is beyond any question. Let’s just say he is partnered with a very classy woman, Maria Sandra Badini, pictured above, right, who’s borne him two equally stylish daughters, one of whom, Clélia Bourdon, Cléa for short, is pictured above left. For his part, Bourdon looks every inch the confident, accomplished filmmaker/actor/manic court- jester; he’s resolutely off-duty, thus aptly léger in his sneakers, jeans, sturdy windbreaker kit. Much safer just to leave it at that.

But as for males at Roland Garros making a bit of an effort at decorous wear, it’s much safer to say that the durably onrushing Chris Pine, of Star Trek, Jack Ryan, and other notable roles, has nailed it in his cream double-breasted with aircraft-carrier-size lapels on June 1. Could there be a bit of the Brad Pitt stylebook at work here? Nah, Pine seems too much of his own man, and Pitt has veered off into some kind of strange hyper-theatrical Bee-Gees-disco-pant mode for the odd red carpet. Pitt is satirizing it; Pine’s look here is sturdier, less whimsical. Paired with a set of tasseled loafers under a straight black trouser, this gear looks ready for any dinner-and-afterparty you’d care to throw at its wearer.

TNT tennis pundit Eugenie Bouchard, pictured above in the press scrum filming tidily on her phone, went for the well-blazered crispy look as well on June 1 — must have been something in the air. But actually, that frock is a frock, or a blazer-frock, or a blazer-cut frock, take your pick. Whatever we choose to call it, it’s working in this press scrum, and we’re sure that whatever she’s about to bruit on camera will be a laser-sharp dispatch.

Naturally, Roland Garros is renowned for drawing the names of the past at this time of year, so, on cue, Russian tennis great Maria Sharapova attends the day 10 matches on June 2. Pictured above, right, Sharapova definitely seems to have gotten the “blazer rules” memo in a sharp dark number with elegant piping. Sharapova gave birth to her and her British fiance Alexander Gilkes’ son Theodore in 2022. Cashing out last September, she sold her $25 million mansion in Manhattan Beach, California, to the Lakers’ Slovenian star Luka Dončić, of all people, and relocated to Europe to be closer to her fiance Gilkes. She sold her Longboat Key, Florida, home in 2020.

Pictured above, left, Alevtina Nelubina is a friend of Sharapova’s, reportedly from years back, and she seems to be a bit of a slight “influencer,” though it’s unclear for whom or what. Suffice it to say that both women are Russian-born, and Mlle. Nelubina may, still, be living in the Russian imperium. For a few years running now, it’s been occasionally difficult to pin down where semi-expat Russians are anchored, if at all.

French tennis great Yannick Noah’s daughter Jenaye won the best-wild-new polo award for her extremely well designed blouse with puffy long-short-sleeves and a deeply-retro-pointed collar with a great long placket in the early going of the tournament’s day three. It’s an unbeatable combo, a polo with a short tennis skirt, but she takes it here off-duty in the most relaxed French way. The source of her comfort with herself is not just that she spent her childhood at Roland Garros, although it is also that. She’s just comfortable in her skin, this Frenchwoman, and it shows brilliantly here. Kudos to Jenaye Noah, very much her own person, for her fashion wit. Who knew a polo could look like that. There are no real seagoing yachts anchored in the Seine, but that top looks like it might always have a yacht hovering somewhere close by.