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Nike’s Wimbledon ‘nightie’ the most impractical sportswear ever

Underwear scandals are common in SW19. Last year, it was the Canadian Eugenie Bouchard’s black bra strap; in 2014, retired men’s champion Pat Cash denounced pre-match underwear checks. And this year, it is Czech player Lucie Šafářová’s Nike tennis dress, which ballooned all game to expose her knickers.

Few things unite Wimbledon crowds (sorry, Andy) like a perceived slight against the tournament’s strictures. But, more to the point: why did Nike design such an impractical dress for the female players it sponsors?

This was, in fact, the second iteration of the £75 Premier Slam dress: Nike asked players to return it for alterations last week. Serena Williams and Sabine Lisicki have both reportedly refused to wear it. “I tried it on but didn’t feel comfortable showing that much,” Lisicki said. Poor 17-year old Katie Swan struggled with the dress during her defeat to Tímea Babos yesterday afternoon. Midway through, she tucked it into her shorts.

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“Nike probably has departments devoted to wearer trials,” says Sally Dixon, the founder of activewear brand Every Second Counts. “I’m very surprised.” She is sympathetic to Swan’s frustrated mid-match alteration. “Players don’t expect to have to redesign kit to make it fit for purpose.”

Notoriously, Wimbledon’s code is the most difficult on the grand slam circuit. Intimidating guidelines demand competitors “be dressed in suitable tennis attire that is almost entirely white” as soon as they “enter the court surround”. They are reminded that “white does not include off-white or cream”. In 2013, Roger Federer was scolded because his shoes had orange soles. Moreover, women must negotiate the dynamic between style, propriety and functionality: brands, keen to appeal to female consumers chasing the athleisure trend, are most interested in the first. And it is virtually mandated that women playing at the elite level wear (very) small skirts although at least they permit movement. In the 1920s, the French champion Suzanne Lenglen wore a ballooning midiskirt to play at Wimbledon. Admittedly, she also drank Cognac on court.

The obsession with outfits is surely a backhanded sexualisation of the women’s game. From Athena’s Tennis Girl poster to celebrated but undecorated pin-up Anna Kournikova, girls in tennis whites are fetishised, their bellowing grunts the subject of flip sexism. When commentators clocked Simona Halep’s breast reduction surgery, the British player Laura Robson was furious. ”You see what she can do with the ball,” she said at the time. “I don’t see how you can bring in boobs to the conversation.”

Anyway, Nike’s “nightie” clearly won’t do. What should tennis kit look like? “Fitted, for an increased range of movement,” suggests Dixon. “It should be second skin. What you wear should be the last thing on your mind.” Never so at Wimbledon.

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Forget flower crowns and fringing, Alexa Chung, Edie Campbell and Suki Waterhouse gave us a new set of festival must-haves at Glastonbury

It's no secret that here at Telegraph Fashion we can't help but eyeroll whenever we hear the term 'festival fashion.' But at Glastonbury this weekend the likes of Alexa Chung, Cressida Bonas and Suki Waterhouse undid some of the damage done by years of fringing, flower crowns or tiered maxi dresses, introducing us to a set of cooler, modern pieces which work for festival dressing now.

If you are set on avoiding the boho festival uniform this summer- a move we strongly encourage- here are some looks spotted in the Glastonbury mud which are practical (hallelujah!) and stylish, but most importantly give the impression that you're there to get down-and-dirty with the music rather than just achieve a perfectly choreographed Instagram shot.

1. High-shine vinyl trousers

This year Alexa Chung centred her Glastonbury wardrobe around a pair of skinny, high-shine vinyl trousers instead of jeans or denim cut-off shorts. The key to wearing vinyl trousers is to keep the rest simple, as shown by Chung who paired hers with a white tee and pink cable knit cardigan by Ganni for their first outing, and then a navy jumper and her trusty Barbour jacket.

If you are considering investing in a pair of vinyls, Vogue fashion news editor Julia Hobbs owns six pairs, and says that the secret is all in the tailoring. “I have them tailored to fit me on Savile Row, and live in them as though they are jeans with a navy cashmere sweater and beaten up ballet pumps."

“My golden rule is never buy leggings,” concedes Hobbs. “Always look for trousers that have have structure and a front zipper, otherwise they can end up looking like a bin liner. The thickness of the vinyl is crucial.” Warning: we are yet to test the intricacies of pulling on vinyls in a two-man tent, but if you've tried it please do let us know how you got on.

2. A zip up hoodie

The hoodie has made a grand return to fashion this year thanks to Vetements' cult oversized sportswear sweaters- one sold-out hoodie was emblazoned with the faces of Leo and Kate in Titanic. But at Glastonbury we also saw the return of the humble, simple zip-up jersey hoodie. Alexa Chung and Poppy Delevingne proved that there's a very specific way of styling said-hoodies; layered under a bomber or denim jacket, with the hood pulled half over your hair- a useful way to tackle the third or fourth day without a hair wash too.

3. An oversized rugby sweatshirt

Grimes' approach to her stage look was surprisingly Sloaney. She wore an XXL rugby shirt with a large white collar and crest at the chest. Her spin was to wear it as a dress with a belt and black tights. Time to raid your boyfriend/ husband/ brother/ Dad's wardrobe.

4. Tracksuit bottoms

Let's face it, this athleisure trend is going nowhere any time soon. Suki Waterhouse wore classic burgundy shiny jogging bottoms with a white stripe down the trouser leg. Instead of wearing a full red tracksuit as seen on the catwalk at Chloe this season, she mixed her trackies with a leather jacket and band t-shirt.

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NikeLab has tapped Louis Vuitton’s menswear artistic director, Kim Jones, for its latest designer capsule collection. Much like Balmain's Olivier Rousteing, who recently fronted a collaboration with Nike, Jones announced the news by way of his personal Instagram account on Monday. The collection, which is slated to drop next month, is the second from a creative director of an LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned brand; Givenchy's creative director, Riccardo Tisci, has been teaming up with the Portland-based sportswear giant since last year.

Given the increasingly frequent nature of high end-meets-mass market collabs, it appears that the contracts that come hand-in-hand with the creative director positions at luxury conglomerate-owned houses, such as those that fall under the umbrellas of LVMH and Kering, for instance, may not be as stringent as one might otherwise expect.

The High Fashion Creative Director Collab

Looking beyond the NikeLab capsules for a moment, consider Raf Simons. The former creative director of Christian Dior has an ongoing arrangement with German sportswear giant, adidas, which was alive and well during his three-year stint at Dior. This scenario varies quite a bit from the Tisci/Jones ones, though, as it was formed prior to Simons taking the helm of Dior. Moreover, Simons maintained (and continues to maintain) an eponymous label during his Dior tenure and it is in connection with that brand that the ongoing adidas collaboration is associated.

Unlike Simons, neither Tisci nor Jones currently have their own labels (Note: Jones did operate an eponymous label upon his graduation from Central Saint Martins in the early 2000’s but closed up shop to take on the lead role at Dunhill in 2008). As such, the NikeLab collections are categorized as personal projects, not technically associated with any brand of their own or of their employers. (More about that in a minute).

Such collabs are not limited to LVMH-owned brands, though. The Arnault empire’s rival, Kering, which owns YSL, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, and Gucci among others, has allowed for somewhat similar projects. While employed by Balenciaga, for instance, Alexander Wang was able to team up with Swedish fast fashion giant H&M for a collaboration, in connection with his eponymous label, that is. And Stella McCartney, whose brand is also owned by Kering, maintains a longstanding partnership with adidas. So, such individualized collabs are not completely unheard of.

Louis Vuitton x Nike or Kim Jones x Nike?

If you are at least a bit skeptical as to just how separate these collaborations are from the houses that employ the big name designers tapped to collaborate on them, you should be. Thus far, most publications (this one included) have identified such designers largely by the houses that employ them. Given the widespread visibility of modern creative directors, Olivier Rousteing, for example, is not just Olivier Rousteing. He is Balmain's creative director, and as a result, headlines about his Nike collection read as follows: "Balmain's Olivier Rousteing Is Collaborating With Nike", "Olivier Rousteing Is Releasing a Nike Collab, and It Looks Very Balmain", and "NikeLab’s Collection with Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing Is Already on eBay", etc. The same goes for Tisci's ongoing Nike collection and its headlines, which basically follow a similar format: "A First Look at Givenchy Designer Riccardo Tisci's NikeLab Apparel." And Jones - the least widely known of the Nike high fashion trio - as well.

In this way, are such individual creative director collaborations all that different from ones in which an actual brand, itself, teams up with another (think: Marni for H&M or Missoni for Target)? Obviously, the technical differences are quite vast (they are likely much cheaper for the mass market brands, for one thing, as they are licensing (more or less) the name of an individual and not a full-fledged luxury brand), but are the risks all that different? Maybe not. Certainly, to some extent, by avoiding putting a high fashion brand name on an outside collaboration, LVMH and Kering are positioning themselves to bypass some of the obvious concerns that arise with these types of projects. These include the potential creation of the appearance of a lack of exclusivity (something crucial in the upper echelon of fashion) or the hypothetical risk of a labor scandal (something with which H&M is extremely familiar), among many others. But by lending their creative directors as opposed to their own brand names, such houses stand to proactively mitigate an array of potential harms by giving them the option/ability to distance themselves even if they are only doing so by way of a technicality from the situation in case things go south (think: "It wasn't our collaboration. It was his," as such creative directors are most likely not going to be indemnified by their employer houses if something were to go wrong in connection with that outside collab).

At the same time, however, at least part of the gamut of potential risks remains for a design house, whether it is lending its name or its creative director, because at the end of the day, the designer brand name does come into play, as indicated by the headlines above. This fact makes it interesting that high fashion houses, like Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, have agreed to sign off on such projects (directly or indirectly by way of some contractual loophole). It is worth noting that given the recent announcement of the impending Kenzo (an LVMH-owned brand) collaboration with H&M, though, maybe we should not be all that surprised by the conglomerate's seemingly laissez-faire attitude when it comes to partnerships.

Most interestingly, maybe, is that neither Givenchy nor Louis Vuitton appear to have ironclad clauses in their directors' contracts prohibiting them from taking on such side projects; thereby, permitting these individuals to team up with other brands and more or less, bring their employers' names right along with them. Chances are, both LVMH and Kering have identified that consumers are able to readily distinguish between collaborations and high fashion collections, and the respective brands at play, particularly because collaborations of this kind have been extremely commonplace in the market for over a decade now. Moreover, by not enforcing all-out exclusivity provisions in their creatives' contracts, such conglomerates stand to avoid even greater pay outs to their creatives than those already in place because contractual provisions limiting an individual’s ability to work elsewhere tend to be extremely expensive (and fashion is a business, after all)!

Finally, there is also the argument that modern day creative directors have quite a bit more pull when it comes to their careers. Signing long-term contracts and staying at any house for any significant amount of time (read: longer than 3 years or so) is no longer "in fashion." Raf Simons left Christian Dior because he did not want to sign a long term contact. Hedi Slimane reportedly left YSL, where he has dramatically revamped its sales numbers, over contractual issues, as well. As such, there is a chance that in order to retain top talent, design houses are simply being forced to become more amenable to negotiation with such talent, no small number of which are becoming celebrities in their own right, to some extent.

This is not to say, though, that such outside collabs do not come with very strict rules from these creative directors' employers, in terms of how the high fashion house's name may be used and to what extent the creative director may participate. Such terms, unfortunately, are only speculable, though, as they'd clearly fall under the category of highly confidential information.

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Stephen Colbert, Harvey Weinstein Send Off Film Exec Daniel Battsek In Style

Film world heavyweight Daniel Battsek was sent off in style last night with a crew of his talented contemporaries. Mr. Battsek, formerly the president of Cohen Media Group and other coveted roles, is set to take over Channel 4’s movie division, Film 4, in London next month.

Thus, the masses came out to Omar’s to toast his new gig. Mr. Omar Hernandez himself was there to party at his eponymous boîte, and co-hosted the evening alongside Celine Rattray of Maven Pics and Dee Poku, founder of WIE Network & The Other Festival.

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The three hosts packed the subterranean hotspot with cinema luminaries ranging from Harvey Weinstein, who, as always, earned much of the room’s attention. Directors like Julie Taymor and actress Zuleikha Robinson were among those paying their respects.

Director Fisher Stevens was overheard talking about his high anticipated, top-secret documentary that he is co-directing with Leonardo DiCaprio on climate change. The pair should expect to win more Oscar gold after Mr. Steven’s film, The Cove, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2009.

Other revelers included comedian and late night host Stephen Colbert with wife Evelyn McGee-Colbert. The two spent much of their evening stationed inside artist Laura Kimpton’s massive LOVE sculpture that sits in the eatery fielding requests for selfies.

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Loved by Kate Moss, Alexa Chung and Jacqueline Kennedy (the real fur coat she wore in the Sixties is said to have helped spark the mass trend), leopard print brings a much needed frisson of intrigue to the pattern spectrum. Florals? Saccharine, so definitely not sexy. Breton? Lovely but ultimately little more than a practical wardrobe staple.

Bypass the Bet Lynch connotations then, and leopard is the perfect statement print with a bit of edge. It defies trends, works in any season and can be dressed up or down - whatever your age.

“I love leopard print, because it’s so obviously sexy and is a challenge to play with,” Sophie Fontanel, the 54-year-old self-made Instagram style icon, tells The Telegraph. Just this weekend, Fontanel graced the Milan menswear fashion shows in a leopard print sweater from Acne’s men’s line. She wore it over a pale mannish shirt - “I love to mix my leopard with childish colours, like baby blue and pink” - with a denim skirt. With aformentioned jumper tied insouciantly around her waist, the look was Parisian-chic modern rather than the 80s Joan Collins you might often associate with big cat prints.

To reinforce our cheetah cheerleading we have Kate Moss to help. The supermodel has just designed a capsule collection of shirts and pajama pants for Equipment and of course there’s leopard print involved. The bold pattern is splashed across washed silk blouses, and is the standout motif among a collection peppered with her other personal talismans (lightning bolts, stars) The key piece - a leopard shirt adorned with a detachable polka dot necktie - would not look out of place in Keith Richards’s Rolling Stones tour wardrobes, and has been a favourite among the Instagram set who have dutifully been tagging their #KATEMOSSXEQ

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So, with Moss reaffirming our leopard love, it’s time we started celebrating the timeless fabulousness of this faithful friend in our wardrobes. After all, once a cheetah… Here are a few styling notes to keep in mind.

Put your best foot forward

Animal print shoes are an easy entry point to the perennial trend. A pair of pointy pumps (heeled or flat) will add an unexpected kick to all-black evening looks, while patterned trainers are a fun way to inject day looks with character.

Get shirty

If Moss’s covetable line of leopard shirting for Equipment, hasn’t convinced you to show your spots, let blogger Alex Steadman sway you. The Frugality founder has been wearing this H&M shirt for nine years, and it still looks as relevant with jeans and a beige mac as it would have done nearly a decade ago- and we predict it will still work perfectly in 2026.

Don’t shy away from bold colour pairings

Pattern clashing might be a step too far (unless Keith Richards is actually your style icon), but Caroline Issa proves that you don’t need to avoid bold colours when wearing leopard. There’s something suitably sunny - and perfect for summer - about her yellow and animal pairing.

A coat is a classic trophy item

Throwing on a leopard print coat is short cut to looking elegant but not too prim. The Oleg Cassini-designed coat that Kennedy wore in 1962 caused demand for leopard pelts to soar so much that in 1973 the US Congress had to introduce an act prohibiting importation of all leopard fur. Luckily thanks to brands such as Shrimps, there are plenty of faux options available.

Wear over evening wear for extra glamour, as demonstrated by Net-a-Porter's Alison Loehnis. This will look wonderfully opulent around Christmas time, when you need to give last year’s little black dresses some extra oomph.

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