More Mini-Macs Than Mini-Skirts

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31093, 23 June 1966, Page 2

More Mini-Macs Than Mini-Skirts

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright) - LONDON,' June 22. It was mini-macs rather than mini-skirts at Wimbledon yesterday as showers damped down the traditional fashion flare among “ladies’ day” crowds at the Lawn tennis championships.

But the traditional flowering of petal hats added colour to the Wimbledon rose garden and nodded enthusiastically over strawberries and cream in the open air restaurant.

The number of girls sporting white mini-dresses who were mistaken for tunic-clad tennis players by keen autograph hunters emphasised the narrowing gap between current high fashion and sports wear.

Players themselves have had their. choice of outfits curbed by the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s “no nonsense” attitude, and insistence on plain white costumes. A leading sports-wear designer, Teddy Tinting, cancelled his preview this year in disgust over reinforcement

of the rules, and watered down his designs for the 55

; women players wearing them lat this season’s Wimbledon. ; “I have been accused of bringing sin into tennis,” the former championship player protested. The prettiest on-court outfit was worn by one of the most feminine players— Italy’s petite Lea Pericoli. She showed a glimpse of frilled lace panties beneath a broderie anglaise shift during her unsuccessful match against Ann Haydon-Jones. Mrs Jones sported a severely styled cotton dress softened by the only colour allowed by the championship committee, an embroidered motif of gold rackets. One player determined to beat the ban on frivolous tennis wear—and to eclipse Maria Bueno’s shocking pink pants and swansdown dress of previous years—is an Australian, Sue Sara. The Adelaide girl, who is here on her tennis-playing honeymoon, is waiting to wear the “see-through” dress j—a shiffon shift with flowers appliqued across bust and hip i—which made an Impact at its first appearance at the Hurlingham Club’s traditional 'Sunday practice event.