![Getty Images (Credit: Getty Images)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j2wnsk.jpg.webp)
After the French Open unveiled a brand new roof for his or her courtroom named after Suzanne Lenglen – its concertina-style design impressed by her pleated skirts – a have a look at the Twenties athlete who blazed a path for contemporary sports activities stars.
Because the rain lashed down within the first week of this yr’s French Open championship, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than tennis followers bought a have a look at the brand-new roof on Stade Roland Garros’ Court docket Suzanne-Lenglen, the event’s second largest stadium. That includes canvas material that unfolds slowly throughout the courtroom like a concertina, the construction has some uncommon architectural inspiration – the well-known pleated skirts as soon as worn by the courtroom’s namesake.
At the moment, many spectators seated underneath the roof may know little in regards to the participant who impressed it aside from her identify – but a century in the past, Lenglen was not solely probably the most celebrated tennis participant on the planet, however one of the well-known ladies, too. An icon of the Jazz Age who introduced a radical new model to tennis, each on and off the courtroom, she modified sport – and vogue – eternally.
![Getty Images Lenglen was the first tennis World Number one, winning eight Grand Slam singles titles (Credit: Getty Images)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j2wn3x.jpg.webp)
Tennis and vogue have lengthy had a detailed relationship, and tennis model is within the highlight once more – helped by Luca Guadagnino’s movie Challengers, which had Loewe inventive director Jonathan Anderson as costume designer, and its star Zendaya wore a succession of tennis-inspired appears for her promotional tour. The #tenniscore aesthetic is throughout TikTok, and vogue homes are snapping up gamers to entrance their campaigns.
Former on-court rivals Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal seem collectively in a brand new Louis Vuitton advert. Italian participant and Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner is a model ambassador for Gucci. Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz – who beat Novak Djokovic in final yr’s thrilling Wimbledon remaining – has appeared in Calvin Klein and Louis Vuitton campaigns. British star Emma Raducanu has a contract with Dior, whereas Coco Gauff graced the quilt of US Vogue this yr. However no participant did extra to develop the connection between tennis and vogue than France’s Suzanne Lenglen.
Born in Paris in 1899, Lenglen first picked up a tennis racket on the age of 11, and rapidly confirmed a expertise for the sport. Seeing her potential, her father turned not only a pushy mum or dad, however a ruthless and demanding coach, making her apply for hours, and berating her for each mistake.
By 15, Lenglen had received the World Hardcourt Championship, however her profession was curtailed by World Struggle One. When tennis resumed in 1919, she was totally able to make her mark – and he or she did it in some model.
That yr, aged 20, Lenglen performed Wimbledon for the primary time and simply made her approach by way of to the ultimate, the place she confronted 40-year-old Brit – and seven-time defending champion – Dorothea Douglass Chambers. The distinction could not have been starker: it was a conflict of previous new v new, custom v progress, pre-war v post-war.
At this level, the usual apparel for feminine tennis gamers included a corset and a petticoat, however Lenglen wore neither. As a substitute, she stepped on to the courtroom – in entrance of King George V and Queen Mary – carrying a short-sleeved pleated costume, the hemline of which fell slightly below her knee, exposing the highest of her rolled down silk stockings as she performed. It was a stark distinction to the ankle-length skirt and high-necked shirt of her opponent. Even her suntan was radical.
“Individuals have been completely horrified as a result of she clearly wasn’t carrying a corset,” says Elizabeth Wilson, creator of Love Sport: A Historical past of Tennis, from Victorian Pastime to International Phenomenon. “Her entire look was in full distinction to the Edwardian norm because it have been, and folks discovered it stunning and obscene.” The press known as it indecent, however quickly each feminine participant can be following her lead.
![Getty Images After her 1914 World Hardcourt Championship win at the age of 15, Lenglen was the youngest major champion in history (Credit: Getty Images)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j2wmzz.jpg.webp)
Moreover, Lenglen was too busy successful to care – not solely that 1919 Wimbledon remaining, however 5 of the subsequent six as effectively (she withdrew from the event in 1924 for well being causes). Dominant barely begins to cowl her achievements, with Lenglen solely dropping one singles match – and three units of tennis – in seven years. She scooped Olympic gold and twice received the “triple” (singles, doubles and blended doubles) on the French Open. So spectacular was her streak it even impressed a line in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Solar Additionally Rises, during which one character “most likely cherished to win as a lot as Lenglen”.
Lenglen’s aggressive, bodily model of play was far more akin to the male gamers of the time, her overhead serve then unprecedented for a feminine participant. Her acrobatic, typically balletic strikes have been made all the better by her outfits.
She wasn’t afraid to point out ardour and character on the courtroom, both. Sporting her signature blunt bob and pink lips, she sipped brandy between units to calm her nerves. When officers stopped her bringing in her hip flask, she had her father throw sugar cubes soaked in cognac from the stands as a substitute.
“Her success, her model, and her charismatic persona arrived at some extent when folks have been craving a distraction from their lives and the state of the world,” says artist and illustrator Tom Humberstone, who was so captivated by Lenglen’s story he based mostly his first graphic novel, Suzanne, on her life.
The French press – delighted to have one thing to rejoice after the struggle – known as her Notre Suzanne (our Suzanne) and, famously, La Divine (The Goddess). Lenglen had box-office attraction – the recognition of her matches was one of many causes Wimbledon moved to a bigger venue in 1922 – and introduced a legion of latest followers to the sport.
“Suzanne made ladies’s tennis simple,” Humberstone tells the BBC. “She was the largest identify in tennis on the time and arguably the largest identify in sport.”
Nevertheless it was her vogue that was most revolutionary of all. “The truth that ladies have been taking part in in tight-fitting whalebone corsets hampered their skill to play freely, and was detrimental to their well being,” says Humberstone. “By eschewing the corset in favour of free-flowing, androgynous attire, she made it attainable for girls to play the game with freedom – whereas additionally paving the best way for the Twenties flapper aesthetic.”
Lenglen’s trademark sleeveless attire have been the work of French designer Jean Patou, then a rival of Coco Chanel, who turned the tennis star into his muse. It actually paid off – between 1919 and 1924, the style home’s income elevated thirtyfold. In line with the Patou web site, the designer wished to “free ladies from the restrictive clothes imposed on them”.
![Getty Images Lenglen's pleated skirts have influenced tennis fashion since, as seen in Zendaya's outfit on the Challengers promotional tour (Credit: Getty Images)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j2wmmk.jpg.webp)
The straightforward, unfastened designs that Lenglen wore on the courtroom weren’t that totally different from these she wore off it, reflecting a burring of the boundaries between sportswear and vogue. Lenglen appeared in a 1926 vogue shoot for Vogue, with the journal writing: “her Jean Patou sports activities costumes are right and stylish on the courtroom and after the sport”.
Everybody wished a bit of Lenglen’s model. “There can be cut-out costume patterns within the Every day Mirror,” says Wilson. “So she actually was influential in that approach.”
In addition to the attire and, later, the well-known pleated skirts, Lenglen was recognized for carrying pastel-coloured cardigans through the pre-match warm-up, in addition to white unisex canvas sneakers and her signature headband, typically adorned with a diamond pin, dubbed the Lenglen bandeau. She’d steadily arrive to her matches carrying an ermine fur coat or stole.
At a time when ladies have been beginning to flout societal expectations and norms, the daring and unbiased Lenglen turned a poster woman not just for a brand new approach of dressing, however for a special type of life.
“She wasn’t genteel,” Wilson tells the BBC. “She was this extraordinary one that wasn’t married and did not have youngsters, who simply performed tennis on a regular basis and flaunted about being well-known and going to balls and dinners and all the remainder of it. So in a approach she was an outlier.”
Sport took on a brand new significance after the struggle. “It bought imbued with all these concepts of heroism, power and braveness,” says Wilson. With the rise of sport as leisure, the largest athletes discovered themselves on the entrance in addition to the again pages.
“Earlier than Lenglen, the idea of sporting celebrities did not actually exist,” says Humberstone. “She got here alongside on the nexus level the place sport began to blow up in reputation after the primary World Struggle, and a big a part of that was Suzanne herself. She was on the centre of this sea change.”
![Getty Images After Williams wore a catsuit at the French Open, French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli said that Roland Garros would introduce a dress code (Credit: Getty Images)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j2wmym.jpg.webp)
Lenglen blended with European royalty and Hollywood stars however commanded simply as a lot, if no more, consideration as any of them. In 1926, a contest in Cannes in opposition to rising US star Helen Wills – seen as her largest rival, regardless that they’d by no means performed one another earlier than – was dubbed the Match of the Century, with tickets altering fingers for extortionate costs, and people unable to get contained in the venue climbing close by timber to get a glimpse of the motion. Lenglen, as soon as once more, triumphed.
If Lenglen have been taking part in at this time, her success on courtroom would translate to tens of tens of millions in prize cash. Because it was, tennis was then nonetheless an novice sport, with those that selected to earn cash from it barred from most main tournaments, together with Wimbledon. In 1926, Lenglen – who hit out on the elitism of an amateurs-only rule that favoured the rich – determined to show skilled and embark on a profitable US tour, calling the transfer “an escape from bondage and slavery”. The truth is, forged out from prestigious occasions and extensively criticised for her determination, it was the start of the tip of her profession. It additionally meant she by no means competed at Stade Roland Garros, which solely turned the location for the French event in 1928.
Within the Thirties she labored in a vogue retailer and later because the director of a French tennis faculty, however aged 39, she died abruptly of pernicious anaemia, three weeks after falling ailing. At the moment, in addition to each a courtroom and a walkway named in her honour, a statue of Lenglen stands within the grounds of Roland Garros, and the ladies’s singles trophy is called the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen.
“On the courtroom, I believe it is onerous to overstate what she did for bringing consideration to the ladies’s sport,” says Humberstone. As for vogue, Suzanne made the tennis courtroom the brand new catwalk. “The athletic put on of 1 week would change into the formal put on of the subsequent.”
The glamour of Lenglen’s period feels long-gone. Luxurious vogue homes could be dressing gamers off-court, however sponsorship offers with massive sportswear manufacturers means they arrive for matches carrying logo-ed hoodies, moderately than fur coats. Gamers with the identical sponsor may even find yourself in precisely the identical outfit, making it onerous for viewers to differentiate who they’re watching – by no means a difficulty with The Goddess.
However Lenglen’s spirit can nonetheless be felt each time a participant feels impressed to push the boundaries and specific themselves on courtroom. “We simply have to have a look at the controversy over Serena Williams’s catsuit [Williams was banned from wearing her black superhero-style outfit at future French Open tournaments after appearing in it during the 2018 French Open] to search out parallels to the type of controversy that Lenglen’s revolutionary vogue selections would provoke,” says Humberstone.
Lenglen’s lasting influence on the sport – from altering the best way ladies dressed and the way aggressively they performed to placing ladies’s tennis within the highlight and paving the best way for feminine sport superstars – is simple. As Humberstone says: “All the issues we take as a right about fashionable sports activities stars, we will hint again to Suzanne Lenglen.”
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