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Australian Open fashion through the decades: how tennis went from preppy and minimal to flashy and fun


From colour-coordinated bandanas to the ‘Serena-tard’, we look back at the on-court attires that truly served

Our laid-back footwear-is-optional lifestyle and the heat of high summer have long created an environment for the best players in the world to embrace colour (Serena Williams has always understood it looks better on TV), midriffs (in the manner of Anna Kournikova) and baggy, untucked T-shirts (in the days of the Sampras-Agassi rivalry). Similarly, Martina Hingis’s white Adidas ensemble from 2002, when she was on her way to her sixth consecutive Australian Open final (she won three of those) reveals two things: one is “a shift from loose, cotton clothing to more fitted stretch polyester garments and a focus on physique”, says Richards. “But clearly what he meant was, if he couldn’t play his preferred sport, he’d just wear basketball jerseys on the tennis court,” says culture critic and a longtime Australian Open observer Osman Faruqi.

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