The Australia Open finals were this weekend, and the women’s final was a great match. These images by Adrian Mesko had a tennis feel be it as a player or in the crowd watching.

Alys Hale by Adrian Mesk for Vogue Australia Jan 2011

{Images Modern Classics via fashion gone rogue}

Jean-Paul Gaultier turned the runway into a lawn tennis court

for his spring-summer 2010 collection for the luxury brand Hermes.

Think Suzanne Lenglen, the graceful French tennis superstar of the 1920s.

At Hermès, it was a case of Love All. Tennis, you may have guessed, was his theme, and Gaultier delivered like a pro to give a topspin to Hermès’ timeless classics. In a Spring when little kilts, black-and-white graphics, and easy sportswear are all newly desirable, Gaultier served up variations on tennis skirts, longline cardigans, dressing gowns, and club T-shirts (the latter grown into long, fluid jersey evening columns). A creamy lizard Birkin even came with a matching ball bag attached. Sarah Mower

It was a 1920s image of the French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen, that feisty woman and daring dresser that became his muse and inspired a tennis theme for Spring 2010 Collection.

According to Diane Elisabeth Poirier’s book “Tennis Fashion,” twenties-era c hampion Suzanne Lenglen would emerge a style icon with her revolutionary attire. Designer Jean Patou made her a fashionably functional knee-length, pleated skirt and sleeveless cardigan. With this, Lenglen became the first woman to play without a corset under her tennis dress-truly daring for her time!

History credits 11th or 12th century French monks as the inventors of tennis and it was from them that the French nobility learned the game. The game became such a popular diversion that both the Pope and Louis IV tried unsuccessfully to ban it. Seven hundred years later, it is still very popular.

Antwerp 1920, Games of the VII Olympiad. Frenchwoman Suzanne LENGLEN, winner of the women’s tennis single and mixed double events. Credit: IOC Olympic Museum Collections

The First Tennis Celebrity

Suzanne Lenglen was one of the greatest women tennis players of all time. Between 1919 and 1926, she lost only one match. The first major tennis star to turn professional, Lenglen died of pernicious anaemia 4 July 1938 at the age 39.

Hermes spring-summer 2010 collection

Despite their sweatbands, his languid girls did not look as if they intended to even perspire in their elegant cream knife-pleated skirts, which came in all lengths, from short and flippy from a dropped waistline to ankle-brushing maxis fastened like kilts.

At the end of the show, designer Jean Paul Gaultier ran down a grass-court runway to take his bow. Guests sat in grass-strewn bleachers, and two brave models carried on a game of tennis at one end of the catwalk while the show went on. It was Wimbledon all the way, with Hermès tennis rackets, tennis bags, sun visors, tennis whites and balls. Le tennis has never looked so chic!

{Images via google images}

Enjoying the Gram Slam tennis of the Australian Open.

A woman sitting on a wall looks at the mountains behind her. The image is by fashion photographer Toni Frissell and was published in Harper’s Bazaar in February 1947

1920s French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen