adidas Gameset Y Women’s Tennis Dress
About Venice
This lagoon city is built across islands in the northern Adriatic, with canals serving the historic center instead of streets for cars. It was the capital of the Republic of Venice until Napoleon ended the state in 1797, after centuries as a maritime power linking the Adriatic, the eastern Mediterranean, and mainland Europe.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
One does not usually explain a dress, but standards have slipped everywhere else, so let us be thorough. This is from the Gameset collection, and its whole idea lives on the back: an elastic strap in the shape of a Y, positioned so that the shoulders are entirely unencumbered. The arm goes up.
The dress stays where it was put. That is architecture, and I use the word deliberately.
The composition, since one ought to know what one is wearing. The dress and its integrated bra are 79% recycled polyester with 21% elastane, in an interlock knit. The separate inner tights are 81% recycled polyester with 19% elastane, also interlock.
At least seventy per cent recycled content throughout, which I am told is the modern virtue, and I shall not be tiresome about it.
The fit is slim — close to the body, no fuss. Round neck. HEAT.RDY is the cooling system, designed for the days when the court is genuinely too hot for civilised behaviour. The inner bra has a mesh front lining and removable padding. The tights are separate rather than sewn in, so one may wear them or dispense with them entirely.
Venice. Naturally. I remember when the Basilica di San Marco was merely fashionable — five domes lined edge to edge in gold mosaic, and one is expected to gasp, and one does, which is dreadfully unbecoming but there it is. Then the Doge’s Palace, and behind it that sealed bridge with the sentimental name, which was not built for sighing; it was built so nobody could see in.
The Rialto next, where the shops are constructed into the span itself, an arrangement I find delightfully shameless.
And do finish at the Squero di San Trovaso, a wooden boatyard still repairing gondolas by hand, because it is the only place left in the city where something is being made rather than photographed.
“One went there when it was a working port. Everyone insists it was always this. It was not.”
A dress built round the shoulders, in a city built round the water. Quite.
LET adidas Gameset Y Women’s Tennis Dress SHOW YOU Venice
Dress: Five domes and all that gold mosaic at San Marco—really, one almost forgives the eleventh century for arriving so recently. A dress must keep its composure when the basilica insists on outshining the sun.
Dress: The Doge's Palace once housed the government of the Venetian Republic, while the enclosed Bridge of Sighs led toward the prisons—an arrangement I find admirably direct, if socially inconvenient. The dress, mercifully, suggests parole.
Dress: The present Rialto Bridge was completed in 1591 and still carries shops across the Grand Canal, because commerce has always had the manners to arrive well dressed. I concede the bridge has aged rather better than most modern shopping centers.
Dress: At the Squero di San Trovaso, gondolas are still repaired in a wooden boatyard, which is the sort of practical elegance we used to call normal. The dress looks ready for tennis; the gondolas, sensibly, refuse to hurry.
Jackson Phillips here. Owner of TTT. We are working hard every day to bring you the most useful product reviews in the business. Our goal is putting the right product in every hand. If you have time, shoot me an email at jacksonphillips@thetennistactician.com and tell me exactly what you think of your purchase. The more feedback we get, the better we can serve. Thank you for your patronage. And Burn, Laugh, and Learn.