ABSTRACT
Perhaps it was significant that the very first notice pinned, in 1870, on the board of the All England Croquet Club at Wimbledon referred to a matter of dress: ‘Gentlemen are requested not to play in their shirt-sleeves when ladies are present’. Since that day many gentlemen and many ladies have graced the sacred lawns of Wimbledon. The great majority have found oblivion on the outer courts; the fortunate few to gain Centre Court immortality live on in memory not by their play alone, but also by the clothes they played in. Dates and match results are dull in anecdote, and it is as difficult to look back and recollect the style of a famous player as it is to recall the features of a once beloved. It is the unimportant things, the clothes and eccentricities, which lodge and make a legend. Wimbledon has a magnetism quite apart from its trophies.
