When she steps onto the court, the tennis player knows she's stepping on a stage. The public expects her to compete, fight and win, dance... she also wants her to act. A champion's performance is what defines her style, her triumph and her celebrity. Her British great-grandmothers found in tennis a sport that freed them from corseting.
The fifteen-year-old tennis player Charlotte Dod won Wimbledon in 1887: she shed her corset and shortened her skirt; a scandal that was the beginning of the long debate on the design of clothing that favors agility and freedom. Sewing houses became interested in this sport, as elitist as their clients.
In 1919, French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen turned to Jean Patou to compete at Wimbledon. She wore a flowing skirt, a short-sleeved blouse and a tulle bandeau on her head. Another scandal, and a great triumph. Lenglen won with a new technique, a mixture of dance, contortion and sprinting. She was the first star in tennis history, a paragon of style and individuality beyond the clubs.
The Spanish tennis player Lili Álvarez and her friend, the dressmaker Elsa Schiaparelli, devised the outfit with which to compete once again at Wimbledon. In 1931, she wore a short sleeveless tunic over white silk culottes. She left behind her an identity milestone and the need to modernize her sports behavior.
And color television arrived, and with it, global visibility. The rule of the white uniform was broken in the Grand Slam - except in Wimbledon - and aesthetic and sporting challenges arose. Also the technical challenges, which produced breathable, elastic and Olympic fabrics for the benefit of the sports industry and its stars.
In the 1970s, female tennis players already took it for granted that, in order to compete with their male counterparts, they not only had to play well; They should have looked better.
North American champion Chris Evert, whose glamor was portrayed by Andy Warhol, hit the runway in halter-neck mini-dresses, lace-trimmed culottes, and a diamond rivière bracelet on her wrist. In the US 1978 Open, Evert's bracelet fell off; he stopped the game until he got it back. Since that day this jewel has been known as a tennis bracelet.
The decade of the seventies represents the beginning of the unstoppable transition from an elitist sport to a mass spectacle, with heroines and heroes who change norms and express themselves through their personal style.
Since then, knowing themselves under the spotlight, athletes have allowed themselves to be courted by the most renowned sports brands, such as Adidas (since 2005 with a line signed by Stella McCartney), Nike, Puma, Reebok or Fila, literally at everyone's feet. and each of the tennis stars, responding with technical advances to their physical and emotional needs.
And the Williams sisters appear, imploding the system and inaugurating a 21st century dominated by technology and networks, dressed to win, whoever falls. Thanks to her striking game, the performance of a tennis player has been definitively intertwined with that of the technical fibers that textile laboratories produce for her.
Serena Williams has wrestled in leggings, gusset sleeves, tutus and lace designed by Virgil Abloh for Nike, and Maria Shaparova soared on the runway in a chic black rhinestone-studded Nike gown, designed by Riccardo Tisci. Psychological tools, they say. They are divas. influence. The best tennis players dress up for the big competitions, because, since women's tennis has existed, they are the ones that break many moulds.
