Are The Fashionable Days Of Tennis Over?
It’s a sport of culture, famous stars, beautiful arenas and strawberries and cream. But over the years Tennis has become as well known for the fashion as it has for the winners it produces.
You, or maybe your grandma, might remember the floaty skirts and the plimsoles of the 20s, but fast forward 90 years and the ‘car-crash culture’ surrounding the current tennis competitions has brought with it a whole different world of sporting outfits.
You will have been hard pushed not to have been grabbed by the Australian Open going on over recent weeks, but it’s the disastrous fashion that has taken centre spot, and it is the the Williams sisters that again have become the girls to watch. Short dresses and glamorous self-designed jewelery has meant that this pair have long shined out during these competitions, but it seems 2011 requires them a booking to see the fashion police.
Venus Williams' Australian Open Outfit
Venus did warn the world that this year it was all to change; ‘There’ll be more illusion, and also skin… more skin this year.’ And more skin there is; canary yellow, lattice-style dress with a floral silk miniskirt, the outfits this year are loud and don’t leave much to the imagination.
And where the Venus girls venture, the others more often than not tend to follow. It has been a few weeks of vulgar colours, eye-sore prints and skirts so short that you can see what the players had for dinner. No longer is a flash of the bum a rare treat when it comes to the ladies games, instead there have been enough flesh-coloured granny pants to keep Bridget Jones happy for a decade.
What the sport needs now is a fashion icon to lead them heads-high into the rest of 2011. Anna Kournikova was the woman to look up to into the 90s; gracing the court with beautiful dresses and hitting up the red carpets in much the same modest style, and we hoped that Maria Sharapova might have been the new Anna when she brought her glamour from the court to VIP events alike, but even she quickly fell into the traps of bad fabrics and bad designs.
So is there any hope? Of course! The one to watch this year is Daria Schieferstein who has just been chosen as a bright young thing to watch by Louis Vuitton; with Vuitton style head to toe we hope our only solice isn’t only the fact that Wimbledon is an all-white affair.
Image source: Telegraph
