When the Wimbledon Championships begin in late June, albeit with fewer live spectators this year, many viewers will be studying the players’ clothing, as well as their game. Wimbledon champions have led tennis style since the 19th century, but like other sportswear, the development of tennis dress has been complicated and many of our predecessors, playing at all levels, will have deliberated over what to wear on court.

Origins of tennis
Although forms of tennis have existed since the Middle Ages, the development of modern lawn tennis is credited to Major Walter Wingfield, who in 1874 patented a sport that he initially called Sphairistike, from ancient Greek for ‘skill in playing at ball’. Croquet was already a fashionable pastime and neatly mown croquet greens were perfect for lawn tennis: accordingly, in 1875 lawn tennis was added to the activities of the All England Croquet Club in Wimbledon (founded 1868). In 1877 the club, renamed the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, instituted the first Lawn Tennis Championships. The only tennis event held in 1877 was the gentlemen’s singles, but rapidly lawn tennis became the club’s principal activity. In 1884 the Wimbledon ladies’ singles was inaugurated, along with gentlemen’s doubles and later, in 1913, ladies’ doubles and mixed doubles. The Wimbledon championships remain the world’s oldest and most celebrated tennis tournament.

From the 1870s onwards, tennis developed as a leisure and social pursuit, initially among the affluent classes who played for amusement on country house lawns and in private indoor courts. Local tennis clubs began to proliferate in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras and public tennis courts for ordinary working people appeared in municipal parks. The teaching of tennis in school began in elite educational institutions but expanded significantly between the wars, when PE shifted away from ‘therapeutic exercises’ to more strenuous physical activities. In most situations no official dress ‘rules’ existed (Wimbledon’s ‘almost entirely white’ dress code dates from 1963), so players through the ages have aimed to balance comfort with decency, conflicting concerns that still surround tennis wear today.

Victorian tennis costume
Early male tennis players adopted the kinds of clothes already worn for popular energetic games like cricket. In the 1870s a loose white shirt was teamed either with trousers or knee-length knickerbockers and black stockings, a lounge jacket usually worn at the start of a game but soon discarded. During the 1880s some players adopted striped sports shirts or crew-necked jerseys and white flannel trousers were usual by the late decade, worn with soft, rubber-soled canvas shoes. In the 1890s a plain or striped flannel blazer became fashionable, often worn with a matching round cap, the blazer pocket bearing the badge of the wearer’s club.

Unlike men, women were mainly governed by fashion and in the mid to late 1870s wore figure-hugging ‘Princess’ gowns incorporating an impractical train. Thick flannel, jersey and serge materials were usual for early tennis costumes, although when Maud Watson won the first Wimbledon Ladies’ Championship in 1884, pale or white garments were becoming popular as they helped mask the dreaded perspiration. Pinafores with ball pockets were a useful addition during the 1800s. In 1885 The Field recommended:
‘A costume of pale blue flannel with deep kilted skirt and long basque bodice, an embroidered apron with pocket to hold the balls.’

Otherwise women’s tennis dress displayed conventional fashion features, even the cumbersome projecting bustle during the mid to late 1880s. The National Dress Society (later Rational Dress Society) advocated more appropriate garments, suggesting removal of hampering corsets and adoption of the controversial bloomer costume, but bloomers were widely regarded as unattractive and were rarely worn for tennis; nor were the ‘comfortable divided skirts’ or curious ‘expanding dress’ proposed by Miss Ada Ballin in The Science of Dress  (1885).

The fear of appearing ‘unladylike’ delayed any real progress in female tennis dress. Fashion publications endorsed alluring, feminine costumes like that coquettishly described by one magazine in 1894:

‘Tennis costume, two inches off the ground, of serge lined with check silk (glimpses of which would be revealed as she trips hither and thither) cut in one with the corselet which has narrow shoulder straps and laces down the back… check silk shirt.’

At the century’s close, Lottie Dodd, Wimbledon champion during the late 1880s and 1890s, desired ‘a suitable attire for women’s tennis which does not impede breathing’.

Edwardian style
By the Edwardian era, men usually wore white or cream flannel suits with shirts and ties. In 1908 the Tailor and Cutter advertised a ‘…flannel suit… made easy fitting at all parts and without lining… Trousers are… easy fitting and of full length as they will frequently have to stand cleaning, which is sure to shrink them… The vest [waistcoat] is an optional part of this suit.’

Women’s tennis dress continued to follow fashion, although newly fashionable separate blouses and skirts were more comfortable than complex Victorian gowns and wide skirt hemlines were often worn several inches off the ground, assisting movement. In 1905 the American May Sutton shocked Wimbledon by rolling back her cuffs to reveal her elbows, her sleeves ‘too long and too hot’: this bold move helped to further the concept of freeing limbs from constricting garments.

During the early 20th century white became firmly established for women’s tennis dress. Our Home magazine wrote on 1 July 1911:

‘Every year there is a discussion as to what is best to play in, but every year the question arrives at the same answer. The short, fairly full, white linen skirt is the best from all points of view, and the white silk shirt.’

However white skirts could present problems, as explained in The Girl’s Own Paper and Women’s Magazine (June 1916):

‘No matter how thick your tennis skirt may be, if the sun is behind you it will shine through and show the outline, and as one cannot wear too many petticoats, it is a query to know what to do to prevent it. Well, I found the most excellent article… an underskirt made of thick servants’ apron linen in the unbleached quality. Cut on straight lines with a plain untrimmed hem, and the back gore made double to the knees… It should be worn over the knickers, and a white petticoat over it in turn, and it will be found to be a complete “sun screen”.’

Inter-war innovations
Male tennis wear remained fairly static until the late 1920s, when a comfortable open-necked shirt replaced the formal collar and tie. By the early 1930s a short-sleeved shirt was becoming acceptable and simultaneously a far more daring development occurred. In 1933 Bunny Austin was the first male tennis player to play a major public match wearing shorts. His lead was soon followed by others and he was championed by the Men’s Dress Reform Party, who had been advocating shorts for tennis. For some years shorts and long trousers were equally popular, but by the late 1930s shorts were more usual: in 1946 Yvon Petra was the last man to win the Wimbledon title in long trousers.

Women’s tennis wear was revolutionised when the Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen played Wimbledon after the First World War wearing a flimsy, uncorseted, calf-length cotton frock with short sleeves, a length of silk chiffon worn as a headband. Tennis dresses rose to the knee in the late 1920s, by which time Californian Helen Wills Moody had also introduced the golf-style visor as an accessory. In 1931 Spanish player Lili d’Alvarez shocked Wimbledon again by wearing a divided skirt (culottes) created by fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli – the introduction of female ‘shorts.’ During the early 1930s a debate raged over culottes, but by the end of the decade masculine-style tailored shorts and short-sleeved shirts were an acceptable alternative to pleated skirts and dresses. Finally Gertrude Moran (‘Gorgeous Gussie’) caused the last major sensation when in 1949 she wore an unusually short white dress designed by Ted Tinling that revealed glimpses of lace-trimmed knickers.

Tennis professionals have long favoured bold dress innovations that extended beyond the realms of their sport, pioneering forms of comfortable, modern clothes that we take for granted today.