There are legends in every game — football, basketball, soccer — but in tennis, the acronym GOAT (greatest of all time) might feel most fitting. While the term did not enter the cultural lexicon for greatness until the 1990s, the players who would come to define it were already making history decades earlier.
When tennis became a national pastime with its own fashion language, Women’s Wear Daily made sure its readers stayed current on the players, games and fans shaping the moment. From Wimbledon and the U.S. Open to the World Championship Tennis circuit, the Bonne Bell Cup and Palm Beach tournaments, New in Fashion chronicled the athletes and the audiences who made the sport a generational obsession.
From the ’60s through the early ’80s, as tennis rose to even more prominence in cities across America and around the world, the names that arrived at center court — some familiar, some less so — would ultimately change the way the game was played and seen. NIF’s archives hold some of the earliest coverage of legends such as Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Stan Smith, Björn Borg, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, Guillermo Vilas, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert Lloyd in their earliest years as they mastered their game on and off the court.
These same names also helped usher in some of the sport’s earliest successful long-term brand collaborations — well before “swag” entered fashion’s dictionary. Players partnered with brands including Head, Adidas, Nike, Fila, Ellesse and even Coca Cola bringing their names and signatures to everything from rackets and sneakers to wristbands and warm-up gear. The head-to-toe branding made tennis one of the most fashionable sports, taking its influence far beyond the court. The players earned the bragging rights, and the style followed.
In time for those heading to the U.S. Open matches from New in Fashion and the Fairchild Archives are exclusive early image outtakes of the players who gave tennis its swagger — and made center court style their own.
