Inside Wimbledon’s first ever official off-court fashion range
“There are worse places to work,” jokes David Hewitt, Wimbledon’s head of retail. We’re on Zoom and behind Hewitt’s head there is a smart grid of green rectangles, the outside courts at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club that are primed and ready for play, days away from the start of the 2023 Championships.
We’re zooming to discuss the Club’s investment in a new smart-casual clothing line – a first – a response to their popular performance-wear range. Last year, the iconic women’s white dress, similar to what the players wear, sold out. The popularity of the performance wear inspired the club to take things further.
“What struck me is how much attention to detail there is here,” says Hewitt. “It’s all about perfect sized strawberries; every blade of grass is cut to eight millimetres. It struck me that the ‘merch,’ as it was called, was really just that. I wouldn’t say an afterthought, just, this is what everyone else does. You hire the usual agent or licensees, they say ‘how many do you want, how many in yellow?’ and so forth. We kind of tore all that up.”
The rationale for making a range of official clothing suitable to wear to Wimbledon, rather than while playing tennis, is straightforward: “This is one of the world’s great tournaments. Why wouldn’t you give the same dedication and rigour to the things you’re selling people to put on their back?” For clothes made by a sports club, the semi-formal range feels boundary pushing. One jumper has blocks of neon yellow and cream, like a zoomed-in tennis ball; a lightweight cotton women’s polo looks properly stylish and the Oxford shirt for men is classic in all the right ways, with a fresh tennis ball logo replacing the old Wimbledon tennis racket to bring the piece into 2023. (The original tennis racket logo on another sweater gives the people what they want.)
We use the facilities; we have a tableaux here, everything here is green. Of course you take things outside in the light
David Hewitt, head of retail at Wimbledon
Other pieces feature bold neon tie-die. There are new pieces of performance-wear, too, including an eye-catching men’s tee in a new shade of “botanical” green with a quarter-length zip. It would look great on or off the court. “It is unusual for an event to be given that kind of freewheeling [creative freedom],” says Hewitt. He has a team of seven stylists year-round who sometimes work at the All England Club in on-site offices. They spend 30 to 40 days a year “tossing around ideas, looking at trends, the same way any designer works,” and the tennis club is an inspiring place to make clothes.
“We did the shoot on Court 3,” says Hewitt. “We have 42 acres here and a lot of it is not used year-round, so there are areas we can take these collections into. We can use the facilities; we have a tableaux here, everything here is green. Of course you take things outside in the light.” Hewitt’s background is in fashion, not sports, and he believes more sports clubs should be making interesting clothing lines. “There’s a market for more creativity,” he says, name checking football for being more interesting than most for its fashion collaborations. The rest of the playing field is rather more barren. “It’s just about saying, why can’t it be more considered?”
If the smart-formal range sells well at the Championships this year, Hewitt would like to use that as a force to consider what more Wimbledon could do as a producer of clothing beyond its association with the Championships. “How do we get more relevant outside the six week championships? You start thinking, let’s go out, look around the grounds, what would you be doing as a winter collection? If you take that to its natural conclusion we probably will be doing some heavier nits at some point. “Tennis is played just about all year round somewhere in the world so I think we can leverage off the back of the other slams and the other tournaments.”
To shop the range visit the online store or buy on site
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