📸: Smathers & Branson Tray | Ball Boy Scented Candle | Crocs Jibbitz | Tennis Club Slide Sandals | Literie Weekends Playing Tennis Candle | Rochambeau Club | The Courts Slippers | Anya Hindmarch Tennis Balls | Marco Tennis Racket | Racquet Magazine | Vintage Scoreboard 

Wimbledon has come and gone, but tennis? Still in rotation—and not just on the courts. It’s in your closet. On your feed. In the language of slow rituals, SPF layering, and structured leisure.

Tenniscore, once a niche aesthetic, is now a full-blown cultural signal. Not because people suddenly became obsessed with perfecting their serves—but because tennis, as a visual and emotional language, taps into something deeper: nostalgia, order, community, elegance, and a craving for balance in a chaotic world.

And that’s exactly where we are.

A Leisurely Legacy

Tennis has long held court as the sport of understated luxury—the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself. By the 1930s, it had become synonymous with a certain kind of life: quiet privilege, heritage clubs, and summers spent between the Hamptons and the South of France. In cities like New York, exclusive enclaves such as The River Club and the New York Athletic Club weren’t just athletic facilities—they were refined social worlds, where the matches were secondary to the company and the cocktails.

📸: Lisa Taylor and Jerry Hall sitting on a bench next to the tennis courts at the Royal Biscayne Hotel in Key Biscayne,  Florida | A model on the tennis courts at the Palmas del Mar beach club in Puerto Rico

Tennis wasn’t about spectacle; it was about ritual. About arriving in pressed whites, knowing the dress code without needing to ask, and playing on courts that hadn’t changed since your grandparents’ debutante days. Even now, the game retains its polish. It’s a symbol of cultivated leisure, of elegance in motion. The appeal isn’t just athletic—it’s architectural, sartorial, generational. It’s tradition, served with impeccable topspin.

📸: Joseph Leombruno and Jack Bodi, May 1954 | Mattie Edwards Hewitt, Vogue, March 1931

Backspin Meets Backstory

Tenniscore isn’t just about white skirts and polo collars—it’s about a feeling. The rhythm of rallies. The formality of scorekeeping. The clarity of boundaries and etiquette. As our social and digital lives get blurrier and noisier, tennis offers structure without rigidity. It’s sporty, but controlled. Clean, but not sterile. Feminine, but never fussy.

“Courtly Behavior,” photographed by Bell Jason, April 2007 | “Game Plan,” photographed by Patrick Demarchelier, July 2013

Fashion brands picked up on this quickly. According to The Glossary, designers like Casablanca and L’Etoile Sport are leaning hard into vintage tennis aesthetics with upgraded materials and storytelling rooted in sunlit nostalgia. It’s a visual return to “simpler times,” but styled for 2025. Think: Grace Kelly energy with an iPhone.

📸: Sporty & Rich

But this revival isn’t just about wistfulness. It’s about recontextualized tradition. As Forbes puts it, tennis has become a platform where fashion brands, wellness companies, and even tech start-ups can "serve up" lifestyle campaigns that are equal parts performance and polish.

From Country Club to Cool Club

Tennis used to be synonymous with exclusivity: gated communities, all-white dress codes, and complicated rules. But the cultural tide has shifted.

📸: Thom Browne

Today’s tenniscore isn’t about fitting in at the country club. It’s about reclaiming the sport as a lifestyle, not a membership. As BrandNation notes, post-COVID we’ve seen padel courts boom in Europe and now quietly shift back to tennis—a sport people are craving not for status, but for connection. Cities are turning old sports infrastructure into hybrid spaces: part-court, part-café, part-clubhouse. Social wellness, minus the pretense.

The new court culture is inclusive, stylish, and vibe-forward. Tennis isn’t a status symbol—it’s an invitation.

"Tennis, Anyone?", by Nick Mele

Fashion’s in Its Tennis Era

Right now, if you’re a brand and you aren’t doing a tennis-themed drop…are you even playing the game?

Everyone’s in on it—Kith x Wilson, Supreme, Veronica Beard x Head, Adidas x Sporty & Rich, New Balance x Miu Miu, and Gucci x Head. 

📸: Kith x Wilson | Eton x Tretorn

📸: Adidas x Sporty and Rich | Veronica Beard x Head

These activations aren’t random. As BrandNation notes, tennis offers a marketing sweet spot: it balances heritage with performance, elite sport with everyday aspiration. It’s quiet luxury with a mean forehand.

📸: Kith x Wilson

Athletes in the Spotlight

And it’s not just the clothes. Tennis players are becoming full-blown cultural figures, thanks to partnerships that go beyond sponsorship.

• Jannik Sinner is now with Gucci

📸: Gucci

• Carlos Alcaraz signed with Louis Vuitton 

📸: Louis Vuitton

• Coco Gauff led a Miu Miu x New Balance 

📸: Miu Miu

This wave of storytelling puts the athlete front and center—not just for what they win, but how they carry themselves while doing it. 

Arthur Elgort, Vogue, 2003 | “Love All,” photographed by Arthur Elgort, November 2003

Serving Something Different

Tennis is doing something quietly radical: it’s shedding its elitist past and stepping into the culture as a new kind of gathering place—part sport, part social ritual. In cities like London and New York, courts are turning into lifestyle hubs, where you’re just as likely to find a doubles match as a cold brew cart and a solid playlist. The pandemic-era padel boom cracked open the door, but post-COVID, tennis is reclaiming space—not for trophies, but for community. Participation in racket sports has soared (padel tripled in the UK last year alone), and cities are now converting unused padel courts back to tennis to meet a growing desire for movement that’s stylish, low-pressure, and deeply communal.

This isn’t about chasing trends—it’s about rethinking how we move, dress, and connect. Tennis has become a cultural sweet spot where wellness, nostalgia, and understated style intersect. It’s familiar but refreshed, structured but breathable, social but unpretentious. There are no grand gestures here—just quiet rituals, iced drinks, stretched calves, and a sense of ease that feels like the beginning of something bette

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