Tennis is an impressive sport. Exciting, even. But it's not cool - not in the style stakes, anyway. While other games have rode the sportswear revival onto runways and street corners the world over, tennis has largely remained the same: preppy.

Which is no bad thing, of course. But between the stuffy suits in centre court and the garb of the players themselves, it's hard to pick out style that is genuinely moving. Tennis is, after all, a conservative sport, and the gear largely reflects this.

But it wasn't aways thus. The first golden age of tennis - and tennis-inspired style - was the 1930s. It was the era responsible for many of the menswear classics we know today, and several came straight from centre court: tennis shoes, polo shirts, white slacks. Back then the tailored kits of icons like Fred Perry and Bill Tilden were far sharper than the performance gear we see on players today - a good thing for the quality of the tennis, if not the aesthetes in the audiences.

Fred Perry and the German tennis player Gottfried von Cramm at Wimbledon, 1936 Getty Images

After his career on the court ended, triple Wimbledon champion Perry went on to found the clothing label in his name in 1952 that would be embraced by successive subcultures of mens style, from the Northern Soulers of the seventies to the skinheads of the eighties to the Britpoppers of the nineties. Tilden, meanwhile, had more in common with Hollywood than he did the Hamptons' old guard: tall, handsome, immaculately-dressed, and, most importantly, full of charm. Even after the apex of his career, Americans flocked to watch Tilden play - and paid a handsome sum to do so - moving tennis from the country clubs of New York state to a genuine spectator sport status.

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Tennis found its grove once again in the 1970s, with a new stable of bona fide stars. John McEnroe and Arthur Ashe were but two of these. While the former was prone to outbursts that resulted in bans and fines and lots of broken tennis rackets, he was also very much a product of his time, favouring Sergio Tacchini tracksuits and handsome perms. Poor trends on reflection, sure, but trends they were. And they made McEnroe iconic.

Meanwhile, Ashe - one of the first black players to gain prestige on the court - flexed the seventies in a more timeless way, with oversized polo collars, pops of colour and aviator spectacles. It's this strain of The Get Down-inspired seventies cool we're seeing once more thanks to Gucci, Prada and Tom Ford.

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But then the 1990s happened, and tennis lost its charm. The kit, for the most part, became homogenous - a sea of bland sports gear that made little impact and bore no resemblance to the sportswear that was actually cool at the time. It didn't help, in Britain at least, that the leading star was perennial nice-guy-comes-last Tim Henman.



By the time the 'Big Four' came to power - the holy quadrant of Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal - imitable style had been almost completely leached from a game now solely about performance. Audiences were seeing the greatest tennis ever played, but its style credentials started and ended with Rafa's headband and Roge's cringeworthy embossed tracksuits.

Until now. In 2018, there are signs of an imminent gilded third age - one in which tennis' style mojo returns (and we're not talking about Uniqlo's recent headline-grabbing sponsorship of Federer). Tennis offers decades of style heritage for brands to appropriate and reimagine, and the labels du jour are taking noting, alongside older outfits coming back en vogue.

Just recently, Palace - a streetwear label that has cultivated an ardent and achingly cool following - has taken a stab at Wimbledon wear in partnership with adidas. The campaign - filled with cool kids wearing subtly branded sportswear and lashings of gold jewellery - has more in common with the Supreme queue than the one outside Wimbledon, which is a good thing. The polo shirts and gym shirts in the collection have married technical performance with aesthetics and several key players are set to wear it over the course of this tournament.

Elsewhere there's been a resurgence of the 80s sportswear label Sergio Tacchini - remember them? - with McEnroe's polo shirts popping up in street style feeds across the internet.

Palace x adidas

So where do we go from here? Another Perry, Tilden, Ashe or McEnroe would be a start. Are we about to see legions of style-conscious youth resplendent in gold chains and tennis whites? Or Ralph Lauren umpires inspiring runways? Or even just some more kits that takes performance and aesthetics into account, like those at this year's World Cup? If it's a yes to any of these questions, tennis may finally be about break popular culture once more. Who knows - it might even get cool again.



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