In 1887, 15-year-old Lottie Dodd competed and won her first Wimbledon wearing white skirts that were half-way up to her knees.  Her legs were covered in black stockings and she wore a white cap. 

In 1905 the next women’s tennis apparel news was made by Wimbledon’s first overseas winner, USA’s May Sutton, who daringly exposed her wrists by wearing the sleeves rolled up on a man’s shirt. 

By 1914 skimmer hats and bustles disappeared, but corsets and multiple layers of starched petticoats were still part of women’s tennis apparel.  Imagine wearing all that and winning seven Wimbledon Championships.  That is exactly what Dorthea Lambert Chambers did.

Suzanne Lenglen added some color to women’s tennis apparel at Wimbledon in 1919.  She wore colorful silk chiffon, short sleeves, white stockings under a calf-length skirt, and no corset.

Helen Wills Moody won eight 1920’s and 1930’s Wimbledon Championships wearing pleated skirts, white blouses, and cardigan sweaters.  She started the trend of visor-type hats familiar in today’s women’s tennis apparel.  Pictures of Moody, in later years, show her wearing no stockings because by the late 1930’s stockings were no longer worn as part of women’s tennis apparel.  At the end of the 1930’s, women’s tennis apparel changed to crewneck shirts and flannel shorts.

The next greatest shocking sensations in women’s tennis apparel were in 1949 at Wimbledon when Gertrude Moran wore a short white tennis dress and white lace panties; and, in the 1970’s when Chris Evert Loyd wore halter-style short tennis dresses like what is worn today by tennis stars Anna Kournikova and the Williams sisters.

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