I love tennis for many reasons. Thanks to some not too bad natural hand-eye coordination, I can play a match without complete on-court humiliation... it's pretty much synonymous with sunshine (Wimbledon aside, obviously)... and it abounds with creativity, both in terms of stylish shot-making and individual fashion. Artists in more than one sense ply their craft on a tennis court.
It's the individual aspect that's important here - unlike football or rugby, where the team kit marks players out as... well... as the team, all the emphasis in tennis is on one player and their self-expression. Usually it helps if that self-expression is done with a racket and ball, but it's not limited to that.
Clothing companies have been pretty quick to pick up on the fact that if you can get a marketable blonde to wear your clothing, then sales and media attention can go through the roof. Sharapova hasn't won a title (slam or otherwise) for a while now (mainly due to injury problems), but she's still one of the most profitable figures in sport (not just in tennis).
Nike knows this, hence the creative input allowed in her swan dress from Wimbledon 2007 (nice way to deal with the prim, all-white rules, although I have to say my first thought when I saw it was that it looked more like some kind of lizard's crest...) and her black crystal Givenchy-inspired evening dress look from 2006's US Open.
The Williams sisters are also famous for combining the worlds of sports and fashion to the extent that Venus has teamed up with designers such as Diane von Furstenberg and Serena has played in a denim skirt and boots. You can love it or hate it, but you can't deny it gets people talking...
... and isn't that the wonderful thing about art?
1 comments:
The swan dress was definitely a mistake.
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