It’s been a year since the powers that be at the French Open took offense for some reason to Serena Williams’ fashion choices. And the greatest women’s tennis player in history is back at Roland Garros this year with another fashion statement.
Before getting to 2019 Serena, let’s flashback to last year’s French Open. Williams was playing in her first major since giving birth to her daughter and in an attempt to combat blood clots she was having post-partum she wore a black catsuit. While many headlines or article leads wrote about the suit as “figure hugging,” as if it were intended to be sexy fashion choice, Williams’ outfit functioned essentially as a giant compression sleeve—a full body version of the super-tight socks you might wear while running or working out at the gym to prevent cramping or worse. But despite a pretty obvious need for the catsuit, French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli announced that Williams would not be able to wear it, saying, according the Associated Press, “I think that sometimes we’ve gone too far…One must respect the game and the place.” Despite entering unseeded, playing without the suit and giving birth just nine months earlier, Williams made it to the fourth round before withdrawing with injury in a match against Maria Sharapova.
Fast forward to the 2019 French Open and Serena is back after making finals at both the 2018 US Open and Wimbledon. This year she’s seeded tenth and after dropping the first set in her opening round match against Vitalia Diatchenko dominated the next two sets 6-1, 6-0. She also looks to be making a statement in response to last year’s catsuit dustup. She wore a black and white-striped two piece that came complete with a warmup cape. That cape? It was emblazoned with the words “mother, champion, queen, goddess,” all in French. It’s not hard to read the choice of using the powerful language and putting in French as a saying, “Hey French Tennis Association, powerful women are not inappropriate in France or anywhere else.”
Serena’s second round match against Japan’s Kurumi Nara is schedule for Thursday.