Serena Williams’s Fashion Smash

When Ms. Williams and her older sister, Venus, arrived on the scene, women’s tennis dress, like tennis itself, was still stuck in the mire of tradition, associated with an antiquated image of a blond pony-tailed sprite zipping around a court in a teeny tiny little “skirt” or “dress” that was like a notional remnant of the longer dresses that came before.

It was highly gendered, in the most stereotypical kind of way (this is a sport, after all, where until the late 20th century female tennis players wore frilly bloomers, like baby dolls, under their faux skirts) and very white. Literally, in the case of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, a.k.a. Wimbledon, where the player dress code specifies dress color.

It was, said Richard Thompson Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History,” “an extension of the country club. And the costume reflected that.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/style/serena-williams-best-looks.html