Dress reform in women's tennis attire has paralleled changing women's fashions from the Edwardian period to current times. Over a century, women's tennis costumes progressed from restrictive, corseted, full-length garments to sleek and comfortable costumes that allow a full range of movement. Today, popular garments pioneered by women's athletic programs at colleges and universities have been introduced to conservative tournament play by innovative players.
Women's Collegiate Athletics
After women's Ivy League colleges were established in the 1880s, American college women reformed sportswear. Photographs from 1882 show tennis players in dark, corseted and bustled, wasp-waist dresses with long tight sleeves that restricted players' range of motion to raising their arms only high enough to play "pat ball," a lady-like tennis. By the late 1880s, tennis dresses had broad, vertical stripes, similar to yachting outfits of the time and the blazers of male tennis players. A 1901 photo shows Smith College players wearing white sports skirts 2 inches off the floor and sleeves rolled to the elbows. In 1905, May Sutton "scandalized" the sport by wearing rolled sleeves and an off-the-floor skirt at Wimbledon.
Suzanne Lenglen Pioneers Wimbledon
Knee-length sports skirts were worn on university campuses as early as 1910, so when French player Suzanne Lenglen wore a short skirt at Wimbledon in 1919, she was building on 10 years of American women's college fashion. Her outfit, created by French fashion designer Jean Patou, featured a short-sleeved ves, plus a short, pleated skirt worn without petticoats. Her stockings were rolled above the knee and secured with garters, instead of hanging from suspenders secured to a corset. Her signature look included a white headscarf.
White
By 1933, Helen Jacobs had worn Bermuda shorts at the U.S. Open at Forest Hills in New York, and in England white garments were required for tournament play at the conservative Wimbledon tennis club. White sports garments are difficult to launder to a pristine condition and symbolize an elite mystique. Even today, when tennis is widely played and no uniform rules apply outside of private club facilities, aficionados cultivate an appearance of sophistication and dedication to the sport by wearing white on the court.
U.S. Open
In 1949, when the press lay on the ground to photograph Gussy Moran's lace-trimmed panties under a short tennis skirt, Wimbledon was again scandalized. That departure from conservative attire was not nearly so radical as Ann White's 1985 form-fitting white unitard, which judges allowed her to wear once, with the understanding that she would return to appropriate attire the next day. The diamond tennis bracelet was launched in 1987 when Chris Evert stopped her game at the U.S. Open because she had lost her bracelet during play. Years later, Serena Williams wore a black bodysuit at the U.S. Open in 2002.
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