By guest writer Mac Katkavich
The beginning of a new year is the ideal time for us to strut our stuff in the purchases made during the holiday season. And no one shows off their new get-ups quite like the players on the professional tennis circuit. The season kicks off Down Under with pros playing tournaments in preparation for the Australian Open in Melbourne. This serves (winky face) as the perfect opportunity for the major tennis clothing brands to make their first impressions on fans and consumers, giving a sneak peak into what their collections will look like for the season’s Grand Slams. Fans of team sports watch their players in the same outfit season after season, with the occasional rebrand. I, as a tennis fan, get to see six or seven different outfits every year, which gives me more to like and more to strongly, strongly dislike. Let’s take a look at the trends of years past – what has worked or not – and find what makes a truly successful collection of tennis outfits.
At the beginning of the 2010’s, two brands were the crown jewels of the sport: Nike and Adidas. With its very own lines, Nike was able to snag four of the top faces in the tennis world to represent the company: Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer. Adidas, on the other hand, had slightly less name recognition with Ana Ivanovic, Caroline Wozniacki, and Andy Murray leading their endorsement roster. However, Adidas had more influence on the European markets given that they are a German brand. Thus, they sponsored more players overall throughout the Top 100. Nike and Adidas’ visibility was pretty equal at any given Major.
There are a few important things to consider with respect to style and aesthetics in the tennis world. For instance, the three S’s: setting, season, and sight. Setting pertains to each of the Grand Slams taking place in a major city with its own culture and style, season pertains to the respective time of the year where different clothes are required depending on the climate, and, of course, sight pertains to what the viewers at home can see within the boundaries of their television screen: the color of the court and sidewalls. In the case of the Australian Open, the tournament takes place in Melbourne during the dry summer season with a sky blue court and black screens lining the walls. This relatively plain combo of three S’s is a designers paradise as there are endless possibilities for a successful collection.
A simple approach would suggest laying into color, with pastels and neons complementing the blues of the court surface and refracting well in the unyielding sun of an Australian summer. Pastels can really pop when paired correctly, but there is a tendency in women’s athleisure clothing to overuse these teals and peaches that fall really flat. It’s the adult version of ‘girl colors!’ Women must choose from a range of colors more fitting for a swatch at Sherwin-Williams than at Rod Laver Arena. Not to mention, the use of pastels has proven to open the door for phrases printed on shirts that read along the lines of Fight like a girl on it – minus ten points. As far as neons go, they can be tastefully curated especially in athleticwear. However, they can skew tacky and dated if not careful. A professional athlete at an international sporting event does not want to look like a seventh-grade boy at a laser tag birthday party.
The 2014 Australian Open is a great example of the best and the worst of the colorful trend. Ana Ivanovic led the Adidas charge in a blue tennis dress, neon orange visor and white shoes with blue and orange details. What makes this outfit stand out is that it was clearly designed with the movement of a tennis match in mind. If Ivanovic was just standing, it would be an incredibly simple look. Once she begins to play, however, the bright blue soles of her shoes flash for a moment as she runs, and her neon orange compression shorts pop when she lunges for the ball. The real star of this outfit is the back of the dress. It is sheer with an X pattern and reveals a neon orange sports bra to pair with the visor. Ana Ivanovic simply looks great, and Adidas made her outfit look perfectly sporty with just enough fashion sprinkled into it. The other winner for Adidas this year was their line with Stella McCartney, which Caroline Wozniacki was the face of for almost all of the 2020s. Wozniacki wore a white dress with a yellow half-reptilian, half-floral pattern on it. The pleated skirt gave it some volume and made her look like she was floating across the court. Finally, the mint stripes across the shoulder straps of the dress really popped when paired with her mint Adidas shoes. Adidas simply hit it out of the park with both of their leading ladies which makes it that much more fun to watch Ana Ivanovic upset #1 Serena Williams at this tournament in one of the matches of the year.
On the other end, Nike’s color scheme for their women’s roster was every shade of boring. Granted, there was some more variety in their collection than Adidas’ blues, but none of them were particularly successful. Serena wore this bubblegum pink dress with a black back that cinches her waist really well, but her fuschia compression shorts and white shoes ruin an already basic outfit. Serena has always been extremely fashionable and taken plenty of risks that have paid off at the Australian Open (see her warm-up outfit on her 2005 title run), so it was disappointing to see Nike not invest in a particularly interesting design for the world’s top player. Worse yet for Nike was their look for the brand’s newest high-profile signing at the time, Eugenie Bouchard, who reached her first Major semifinal at AO 2014 at just twenty years old. It’s too bad she did it in such a lame outfit though. She beat Ana Ivanovic in the quarterfinals wearing a blue and grey dress that is almost as unflattering as it is unimpressive. The first problem is that the color could not be less inspired nor complementary to the court surface. It seems Nike’s design team just bailed and chose the color ‘default teal’ for this outfit. The waist is too high, the black stripes on her grey skirt are inexplicably tacky. Worse yet, they had her wearing these Nike Vapor shoes (Roger Federer’s line) in a different blue that had nothing to do with the dress. Again, Nike has made Bouchard look great – I still think about her Australian Open 2018 look – but my god, Nike did everything they could in 2014 to not make a creative choice about their players’ clothing.
Over the years, the brand that takes more risks has been most successful. Adidas did a great job in 2014, but they decided to beat the design to death by recreating it three times in the following five years with Angelique Kerber as the face of their women’s line. I used to spend the days after New Year’s trying to find leaks of her AO kit, and every year I had to do a double-take that it was not the same outfit from the year before. Their Stella McCartney collaborations were far more chic and fashionable which makes sense since they were attempting to market themselves to a wealthier country club crowd. Nike began going a lot sleeker, using straight lines and geometric patterns over Adidas’ ombrés. Their Nike Vapors in 2017 were a radioactive splash upon the court as a part of a collection full of black and white stripes. 2021 brought similar black and white bases, but their color blocking looked so chic. Serena’s outfit during this tournament is the single most beautiful outfit ever worn on a tennis court. The slant of the pink and red blocks up her left sides elongates her body during her service motion, and the matching electric blue trim to her headband tightens the look up. Serena is the sole icon of tennis fashion.
Pro tennis has entered a new age of fashion in the 2020s. The monopolies once stood on top of the game have gone the way of the boutique. At the 2014 Australian Open, eleven out of the top fifteen women’s players were sponsored by Nike or Adidas. Twelve different clothing endorsements were represented out of the top fifteen players at the 2024 Australian Open. The personal brand of these players have become that much more important in the age of social media. Why settle for a rank-and-file, industry standard sponsorship from a large brand when you can be the face of an up-and-coming one? What one wears on court is now dictated by what gets more clicks. The greatest success story from this shifting trend is Iga Świątek. She had bounced around a few of the global brands like Nike and Asics in her teen years. Then, after winning two Majors and finishing the season World #1 in 2022, she signed a deal with On Running, a company partly owned by Roger Federer, as their first professional tennis sponsorship at just 21 years old. By the end of 2023, she was the highest-paid female athlete in the world according to Forbes.
The 2025 Australian Open begins next week, where Nike will still lead the field with their recent poster girl Aryna Sabalenka at #1, and Iga Świątek will wear her line with ON at #2. On our quest to figure out who the best-dressed players are at this tournament from year to year, it has always been the players whose sponsors tailored them individually that have topped the list. Now, since players are increasingly interested in partnering with smaller brands, the focus on the individual has never been higher. Thus, the opportunity for me to critique some truly disastrous outfits has diversified. Just, please no pastels.
@mackatkavich
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