Both players are brand ambassadors for Gucci, which is just one of several luxury houses that have been busy tapping tennis superstars: Naomi Osaka and Carlos Alcaraz are with Louis Vuitton; Jack Draper has modelled for Burberry; China’s Zheng Qinwen is with Dior and Lorenzo Musetti with Bottega Veneta. “When you’re looking at tennis as a game, it’s a player for two to five hours on their own,” points out author Sunita Kumar Nair, whose new book Ace: The Times & Style of Tennis, explores how fashion has shaped the game, and vice versa. “The court is their stage or runway in a way, and it’s a great opportunity for brands to showcase what they need to.”
Nair chronicles the game’s beginnings as a social sport among the elite in her book, how designers such as Jean Patou and Gabrielle Chanel – who introduced a diffusion line of jersey sportswear at her Deauville boutique in 1913 – helped to pave the way for functional designs for female tennis players, the rise of the tennis star-as-brand-ambassador and the Hollywood-ification of the sport.
“What has not been said about my chic? I probably get more compliments for my attire than my playing. It’s almost irritating,” the French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen said in 1926. Perhaps the first female tennis superstar, the former world number one – who won six Wimbledon titles – also blazed a trail when it came to fashion – in 1919 she wore a Jean Patou dress with a hemline that fell to mid-calf. In 1920 her dress was shorter still, and she reapplied her red lipstick during breaks in play.
According to Nair, the designer enjoyed a spike in sales as a result of dressing Lenglen (“I do believe that Patou’s success is no less than my own,” the player said), and the relationship inspired Patou’s pioneering sportswear boutique Le Coin des Sports, which sold golf, skiing, swimming and tennis attire. “Chanel and Patou saw the value in these boutiques, and it was so forward thinking because they were responding to what was happening societally,” says the author.
