In the off-season, when the WTA stars put away their racquets, Women’s Tennis Blog traditionally gets to look back at the year behind, from the fashion perspective, and since today is Ana Ivanovic‘s 26th birthday, the most recognizable face of Adidas is having the honor of being featured in the launch of our fashion retrospections for 2013.
After playing the Hopman Cup in her last year’s US Open eye-popping yellow dress, Ivanovic officially started her 2013 season in another yellow design, this time daringly featuring grey, which proved to be fantastic.
During the spring tournaments, Ivanovic worked the same dress, just the blue version with yellow details.
At Roland Garros, her so far career-defining tournament, Ivanovic wore a wonderful navy dress with orange accents. Absolute match for clay!
HERE’S OUR FULL GALLERY OF WTA FASHION RETROSPECTIONS
At Wimbledon Adidas introduced the dress design with a horizontal see-through diagonal on chest and in my opinion it provided just the right edge on a perfectly sporty item.
The brand translated the same style to all the subsequent tournaments of the year, making the red and blue versions of the piece, with an addition of a graphic print on chest.
Everything about the dresses is perfect and Adidas must have realized it, putting it on countless brand ambassadors at the countless number of tournaments. Eventually, tennis fans, who are used to much more variety, got fed up and even frustrated by the same old stuff by Adidas.
However, there are fans who support Adidas’ approach of less designs throughout a season, and the thoughts of those fans can be summed up in the quote of one of our readers, Tulp:
Better a good design on thousand players throughout a year than a bad-to-mediocre one on few during a fortnight, methinks. (Unless one is a spoiled brat addicted to a daily shot of consumer’s latest cheap thrills, of course.)
What do you think of Adidas’ approach of fewer high-quality designs? Do you actually like their style? (photos: © Neal Trousdale, sr_cranks, Tennis Buzz, Marianne Bevis)
I think the best piece was the RG dress. I absolutely love the navy with orange. Second best is imo the dark blue and red dress, but that wasn’t as chique as the RG one was.
But somehow I think Adidas didn’t do a great job this year with very dull desings and having the same creations over and over and over. With as grand finale the WTA Champ set of Kerber… oh wait, that was just the same as the previous tournaments… :S
What bothered me the most was the absence of any difference between the blue/yellow or yellow/gray dresses and the tank/skirt combination. They could have just made some more distinction between the two, right?
Can’t wait to see what they create for the AO! 🙂
Liz, I am a fan of all the Adidas designs that Ana wore, especially the Wimbledon dress and its colorful versions. I did bother me that there were very few designs and soooo many players are now wearing Adidas, sometimes at tournaments you can think that your vision is impaired. However, Tulp’s comment did shake up my mind, it is true that we don’t need to have new consumer goods every week. Unlike you, I didn’t mind that there was no distinction between the dresses and the separates.
I can actually sum up and say that I don’t mind Adidas having fewer designs, I just mind it that they have dozens of brand ambassadors now, they should’ve remained at just a couple of top players.
Adidas really had a winner with the red and blue dress. It seems like the marketing was to have beautiful players wear some combination of it at multiple events. Every player I saw in it looked gorgeous.
Marija, you have started off with the most beautiful player in tennis. I saw Ana this summer in our hotel and she actually glowed! What will you do for an encore?
I love all of them. In my opinion, the best one is Roland Garros’s, but I also like the dresses that she wore after Wimbledon.
Nice post 🙂
I like all the dresses that Ana wore in 2013, especially the blue dress for clay court season.
A few great designs are preferable, and any AF
Addidas not worn by wozniacki is a good design. Of course,ana looks good in anything.
I still think that Ana deserves her own dresses, and not just be in the same outfit as all other girls under the Adizero line.
Love the RG dress though.
I am no fan of Ivanovic or of Adidas really, but she looks great in her outfits. That said, I find the Adidas designs to be overused and after a number of tournaments to be just bland. The red US Open dress and Roland Garros look great. The rest…. 🙂 I’ll leave no comment on them.
JohnnyB, I’ll see, it will depend on my inspiration 🙂 Maybe I will continue with Adidas, this time on Wozniacki… Maybe.
Brenda, thanks. I try 🙂
Kris, that will not happen that easily. Ana should raise her game a lot in order to be the only one wearing Adizero.
I like all of her dresses except the blue/yellow one during the claycourt season. It just didn’t work.
Ana was the only one who wore the RG one, wasn’t she? Maybe that’s why it looks so refreshing. Shame that she didn’t wear it that much.
Tenniz-fan, yeah, she wore the RG dress only at RG. And as I remember she was the only one who wore it.
Adidas is my favorite brand, but let’s be honest – it’s not her outfit what makes her looks so good. According to me she is the most beautiful female tennis player.
I think that the dresses were all nice; Adidas always make cool clothes.
Although I don´t like that the brand just give 2 designs and change the colors, really is one of the biggest sport brands in the world! Besides with so many players wore them is annoying.
About the RG dress, Adidas is one of the sponsors of the tournament and in the past few years Tsonga has been wearing an exclusive design for the french open. This year it´s been applied on Ana as well
Ana’s outfits are by far my favorite, and although I did agree with some fans when it comes to the lack of variety, in the past few years thanks to Ana’s oscillations in game and less matches she plays, I guess this isn’t so noticeable and I don’t mind it anymore o.O My favourite is the Roland Garros one, and I hope next year she and Adidas will continue this new Roland Garros tradition 🙂
Marija, you know who i am going to suggest – SERENA! 😀
Jacob, I will definitely not skip Serena. She’s not my next, though, guess who’s next – Bethanie Mattek Sands! 😀 Stay tuned, I should post the retrospection today.
I wish Adidas gave Ana more to work with. Her Roland Garros dress was outstanding and one of my favorites of the year. But pretty much every Adidas lady was wearing that red and blue kit this summer and autumn. Ana can carry her own designs.
It’s consistent every year. I just love her RG dress. I wish Ana comes back soon!