There is perhaps no athletic garment as versatile as the tennis skirt, a breezy, thigh-length piece of clothing that allows athletes to leap, lunge, and pivot with ease.
Tennis skirts have had a long and rocky road to the center court of sports fashion. They’ve been too short and not short enough—symbols of both oppression and liberation.
Even as tennis skirts have gained popularity off the court—including Zendaya’s use of them on the red carpet to promote her 2024 tennis film Challengers—the controversy over their shifting hemlines proves that women in sports have long been scrutinized for what they wear. Here’s how they used and abandoned the iconic skirt to play by their own rules.
Origins of the tennis skirt
When Wimbledon’s All-England Club held its first ladies’ championship game in 1884, the two opponents—sisters Maud and Lilian Watson—wore outfits that reflected the fashions of the era: long skirts, complete with bustles and layers of undergarments.
(Bras are older than you think—much older.)
These bulky skirts weren’t very player-friendly. Lottie Dodd, who was only 15 when she won the All-England Club championship in 1887, wrote three years later, “Ladies’ dress […] is a matter for grave consideration; for how can they ever hope to play a sound game when their dresses impede the free movement of every limb?”
In the early days of women’s tennis, players wore long skirts like the one seen in this circa 1887 pencil drawing by Belgian artist Fernand Khnopff.
Photograph by Christie’s Images, Bridgeman Images
In 1905, U.S. tennis player May Sutton shocked officials by wearing a tennis skirt that exposed her ankles—an early tennis fashion renegade.
Photograph by Look and Learn, Bridgeman Images
To break free from the confines of cumbersome tennis skirts, individual players took matters into their own hands. May Sutton helped define a new look when she played at Wimbledon in 1905. Her blouse and skirt were looser, giving her a greater range of motion. And, most shockingly, her skirt was short enough to expose her ankles. However, officials dinged Sutton for her attire and required her to lower her skirt to what they considered to be an appropriate length before she could resume play.
Why tennis skirts became so popular
By the 1910s, most women on the tennis court wore long, broad skirts and blouses that were at least elbow-length.
French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen wasn’t one of them. Instead, she spearheaded a fashion revolution in tennis. Lenglen played in the 1919 ladies’ championship at Wimbledon, and she did it in an unconventional outfit that shocked the establishment: Her skirt daringly only reached the middle of her calf.
The famous French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen practices outdoors before her first appearance at Madison Square Garden in New York City in October 1926. Lenglen also upended typical tennis attire with a skirt that hit the middle of her calf.
Photograph by Prismatic Pictures, Bridgeman Images
(She designed gowns for Jackie Kennedy. Why was she kept a secret?)
Many players embraced calf- and knee-length skirts in the next decade. “The short pleated skirt is the only one for tennis,” wrote American player Helen Wills in her 1928 book Tennis. “It has a classic simplicity, and in action is most comfortable for the player and pleasing to the onlooker. From an artistic standpoint, the pleated skirt possesses grace and beauty in action.”
How tennis skirts got so short
By the 1930s, new fashions had emerged. American player Helen Jacobs, for example, preferred shorts. She explained to The New York Times that shorts gave her a “tremendous advantage” on the court, since “they are cooler and enable one to get around so much faster.”
Shorts and slacks attracted the ire of designers like Ted Tinling, a one-time tennis player who lambasted what he called the “‘manly look’ of the late ‘thirties’” in women’s tennis fashion. Tinling led the charge for the feminization of tennis attire by designing flashy tennis dresses and skirts.
Tinling was behind one of the most controversial tennis outfits of the 1940s. American tennis star Gussie Moran shocked Wimbledon in 1949 with her skirt—or, rather, what was beneath it. Her skirt was short enough to give onlookers glimpses of her lace underwear. Moran later lamented, “I found more attention being focused on my backside than on my backhand.”
(When men’s fashion had a revolution—in medieval times.)
Althea Gibson became the first African American person to win a Wimbledon title on July 6, 1957. By the 1950s, thigh-length tennis skirts had become a staple on the court.
Photograph by AP Photo
By the end of the 1940s, the typical tennis skirt had a hemline that was about an inch off the ground when kneeling—and those “manly” uniforms were “replaced by shorter and more figure-hugging costumes that accentuated rather than hid the curvaceous female form,” wrote historian Robert Lake in A Social History of Tennis in Britain.
Why tennis skirts are now popular on and off the court
Shorter tennis skirts, originally meant to allow women greater freedom of movement, have since become a symbol of a particular kind of femininity. During the 2015 Australian Open, one commentator asked Canadian player Eugenie Bouchard to “give us a twirl” in her pink skirt. Indeed, some critics have derided tennis skirts for being sexist and promoting the male gaze. The revealing cut has also sometimes impeded women on the court—such as one lingerie-like dress that players in 2016 said distracted them and made them feel too exposed.
Martina Navratilova strokes the ball during the French Open in Paris in June 1986. As hemlines continued to shrink, tennis skirts have courted controversy among those who argue they promote the male gaze—and people who enjoy the breezy femininity they provide.
Photograph by Adam Stoltman, AP Photo
For others, the skirt’s femininity is the point. “I think our sport is very tough, aggressive and physical, and women have a feminine side, so it’s nice to be able to show that through pretty outfits,” player Maria Sharapova told Vanity Fair in 2013.
Breezy tennis skirts have become ubiquitous on and off the court. American tennis legend Serena Williams told Marie Claire in 2024, “Tennis style you can wear, and I think we’re seeing this more and more nowadays that you can wear it anywhere. […] They’re just really nice, comfortable dresses.”
Serena Williams told Marie Claire in 2024 that it was no surprise tennis skirts had become a feature of modern fashion: “They’re just really nice, comfortable dresses.”
Photograph by Hannah Mckay, Reuters/Redux
(Fast fashion goes to die in this Chilean desert.)
Today, women aren’t required to wear tennis skirts during games—just “appropriate tennis attire,” according to the World Tennis Association. However, players do still have to fight expectations of what is appropriate attire. When Williams played in a 2018 French Open match, she wore a skin-tight bodysuit, which she chose to prevent postpartum blood clots.
French Tennis Federation president Bernard Giudicelli derided the outfit, vowing, “It will no longer be accepted. One must respect the game and the place.” Giudicelli saw to it that the federation would ban bodysuits.
The tennis skirt’s place in the sport, and in fashion, may be secure. Yet, over a century since tennis skirts first became a topic of controversy, it seems likely that debates over what women wear on the court will remain as loud as ever.
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