Australian Open fashion through the decades: how tennis went from preppy and minimal to flashy and fun
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From colour-coordinated bandanas to the ‘Serena-tard’, we look back at the on-court attires that truly served. The Australian Open, much like the cast of characters who step on to the sunshine-soaked courts every January, has its own sense of style. Over the decades, it has evolved to have more in common with the neon glamour of the US Open than the buttoned-up all-white tradition of Wimbledon, but energetically it lands somewhere in between.
![[(L-R): Pete Sampras’s coordinated shorts and T-shirt in 1996, Andre Agassi in an a oversized silhouette and signature bandana in 1995, and Mark Philippoussis in 1996 when he beat Sampras.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/49070bc389d264bdcdc54941253bdd5b5c52548e/0_0_2500_1500/master/2500.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Our laid-back footwear-is-optional lifestyle and the heat of high summer have long created an environment for the best players in the world to embrace colour (Serena Williams has always understood it looks better on TV), midriffs (in the manner of Anna Kournikova) and baggy, untucked T-shirts (in the days of the Sampras-Agassi rivalry).
![[Martina Hingis’s white Adidas ensemble from 2002.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/611cc302c6c739b9b6bf316e98df1720e744d177/0_0_2344_3000/master/2344.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Tennis endures as the major sporting arena that gives players a platform for highly stylised self-expression – so long as it remains within the International Tennis Federation’s rules: clean and customarily accepted tennis attire. The too-big silhouettes of this era could not look any more comfortable. On the way to the first of his four Australian Open victories, Andre Agassi defeated boy next door Pat Rafter in the fourth round of the 1995 tournament. At the time, Agassi’s style was his signature – colour-coordinated bandanas, shorts and T-shirts that bordered on streetwear.
![[Venus Williams in 2011.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4d1789c81e4f9d55e1564dff85f15780fa55fc0d/0_0_3000_2000/master/3000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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