Fashion Takes Center Court at Wimbledon

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Fashion Takes Center Court at Wimbledon

What's going on: Maybe it’s all the white, but is this year’s Wimbledon feeling vaguely… bridal to anyone else? The ever-closer marriage of fashion and sports means athletes often serve looks on their way to competitions, but Naomi Osaka just entered a league of her own. The No. 14 seed glided onto the Wimbledon grass on Monday looking almost regal, wrapped in flowing, white kimono-inspired attire made from vintage Japanese wedding garments. She told reporters the look was a nod to Lucy Liu's Kill Bill character (not a woman you want to cross). Osaka set the tone for what "tennis whites" could mean, and several men's and women's players have tried to keep up. Taylor Fritz (or should we say, Fits) rebranded business casual when he wore an all-white suit — complete with tearaway pants — to his first-round match. Meanwhile, Marta Kostyuk took a more personal approach, wearing a new version of a tennis dress inspired by the wedding gown she codesigned with Wilson in 2023. Aces all around.

Our take: On paper, Wimbledon shouldn't be tennis's biggest fashion stage. The All England Club signs off on every outfit players plan to wear a year in advance and dictates nearly every detail, Sunita Kumar Nair, who literally wrote the book on tennis style, told theSkimm. It’s spent more than a century treating white attire as a symbol of tradition and uniformity. Even seemingly small changes — like permitting shorter hemlines in the early 1900s or finally allowing women to wear dark undershorts in 2023 — have sparked debate. That's exactly what makes this moment so remarkable. Kumar Nair says that today's players increasingly see their walk-on outfits and court attire as chances to express their personality, confidence, and flair. She adds that designers now "relish the challenge" to create something memorable within Wimbledon's famously rigid rules: “From Lacoste’s jacket for Novak [Djokovic], to Coco [Gauff]’s Miu Miu baby-doll dress, to Naomi with her incredible Japanese traditional look, there is no way that all white is boring.”

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No Notes

Skimmed by Mallory Simon and Jordan Galloway. Fact-checked by Jordan Mamone.

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