© Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum

Designer clothing in women’s tennis is now commonplace, nowhere more so than at Wimbledon, which has been the catwalk for tennis fashion for longer than most people realise. The name of “Gorgeous Gussie” Moran is inevitably the first to be mentioned in connection with fashion in the sport, and while it is certainly true that Miss Moran and her lace-trimmed panties caused a sensation at The Championships in 1949, the ladies had taken to revealing a little of their shapely forms long before then.

When women first began to play tennis, in the 1860s, heavy material like flannel or serge was deemed suitable, with the addition of a bustle or even furs, but by the time Maud Watson won the first Wimbledon Ladies’ Championship in 1884 white clothing had become popular since it helped to mask perspiration, the dreaded consequence of running.

Miss Watson, 19 years old and a vicar’s daughter, was all in white as she defeated her older sister, Lilian, in the final, but it was a constricting outfit, a bustled two-piece costume, topped by a sporty male straw boater. If that was not an early fashion statement, what is?

By the time the 15-year-old Lottie Dod won Wimbledon three years later her calf-length skirts had to be seen as acceptable, since they also formed part of her school uniform. But even by the turn of the century Miss Dod was pleading for “a suitable attire for women’s tennis which does not impede breathing.”

In 1905 along came the American May Sutton, who at home in California had taken to playing in her father’s shirts because of the extra freedom of movement they offered. That year she caused a stir, not merely by winning Wimbledon but by doing so after rolling back her cuffs and revealing her wrists. The sleeves on her dress, she complained, were “too long and too hot.”

By the time Dorothea Lambert Chambers, Wimbledon’s champion seven times between 1903 and 1914, came on the scene hats and bustles had disappeared but she triumphed on court while wearing two or three stiff petticoats, as well as corsets. All this was to change in 1919, the first Wimbledon to be staged after the First World War, by the daring Frenchwoman, Suzanne Lenglen.

Elizabeth Ryan, winner of 19 Wimbledon titles, said memorably of Lenglen, “All women players should go on their knees in thankfulness to Suzanne for delivering them from the tyranny of corsets.” Not only the corsets had vanished when Lenglen breezed into tennis history. She wore a flimsy and revealing calf-length cotton frock with short sleeves, as much a sensation at the time as Gussie Moran just after the Second World War. To this outfit Lenglen was to add flamboyant extras, such as several yards of coloured silk chiffon and, another first for women, a headband. Shiny white stockings, rolled to the knee, also caused a mixture of apoplexy and ecstasy.

This balletic figure not only set the tennis styles of that time but also the everyday fashion demands. The contrast could not have been stronger with the next woman to dominate Wimbledon, Helen Wills Moody. This Californian, the leading lady of The Championships for 14 years before the Second World War, made the golf-type eyeshade fashionable and, like Lottie Dod, enjoyed playing in a school-type white blouse and pleated skirt, adding a lambswool cardigan on chilly days.

In the late 1930s fashion turned towards masculinity, particularly among American competitors like Helen Jacobs and Alice Marble, with tailored flannel shorts (which followed the demise of stockings) and crewneck T-shirts. The men, too, made their own fashion statement about that time by discarding flannels for shorts, and in 1946 Yvon Petra was the last man to win the title in long trousers.

The immediate postwar Wimbledon years were dominated by American women (Pauline Betz, Louise Brough, Doris Hart, Margaret Osborne) who wore the sort of sensible clothing which made playing tennis easy – jockey caps, short-sleeved shirts and skirts or shorts. All the more sensational, then, was the eruption on the scene of Gertrude Agusta Moran, a leggy Californian who was promptly dubbed “Gussie” by the British media. The word “Gorgeous” was added when, dressed by the tennis fashion guru, Ted Tinling, she played the 1949 Championships.

Beneath her regulation white dress trimmed with white satin (“because I thought of her as a shimmering personality” explained Tinling) there was the occasional enticing glimpse of panties trimmed with what Tinling later revealed was “coarse cotton lace of the sort often used on household linen.” Coarse or not, it caused a furore.

Gussie and her knickers appeared on the front pages of newspapers and the covers of magazines across the world, and a racehorse, an aircraft and a special sauce were named after her. Since then the fashion statements have become stronger but not necessarily more daring.

They have also been carefully monitored by the All England Club, which stepped in on the occasion the American Anne White lived up to her name by playing on an outside court in an all-white body stocking. It was promptly banned.

Written by Ronald Atkin