It wasn’t a fashion statement first. It was medical equipment she happened to look like a superhero in. At the 2018 French Open — her first Grand Slam since giving birth — Serena Williams wore a full-body compression catsuit that helped keep her blood circulating after she nearly died of childbirth complications. The French Open’s answer, that August, was to ban it.
Remember what she had survived. Williams gave birth to her daughter on September 1, 2017, and afterward suffered a pulmonary embolism and further blood-clot complications — the kind of postpartum emergency that ends careers and lives. Returning to Grand Slam tennis at Roland Garros in 2018 was already a medical story before it was a fashion one.
The catsuit had a job: the compression helped keep her blood circulating. She called it her superhero look, dedicated it to mothers who have had tough recoveries, and said it made her feel like a warrior princess from Wakanda. Mothers everywhere understood the dedication instantly — a champion, months removed from a life-threatening delivery, dressing in a way that protected her body and told women in the same fight that they were seen.
“One must respect the game and the place”
Then, that August, French Tennis Federation president Bernard Giudicelli announced the outfit “will no longer be accepted,” saying: “One must respect the game and the place.”
Read that reasoning next to the medical record. The garment a woman wore because her blood had clotted dangerously after childbirth — the garment she dedicated to mothers recovering from exactly that — was ruled out in the name of respecting the venue. This page covers hair rules and dress rules for a living, and the pattern is always the same: the rule is never really about the rule. It’s about who gets to decide what a woman’s body should look like while it does its work.
The rulebook that did change
There is a sequel, and this page prints it precisely. In December 2018, the WTA changed its own rulebook to expressly allow leggings and compression shorts worn without a skirt or dress. To be exact about it: the WTA governs WTA events — the Grand Slams keep their own dress codes, and Roland Garros did not reverse itself. Nobody should tell you the French Open backed down, because it didn’t.
But the women’s tour — the week-in, week-out rulebook of her profession — looked at what Serena wore, and why, and wrote it into the rules as allowed. The catsuit banned in Paris became, within months, expressly legal across the tour. She didn’t just wear it. She moved the rulebook that governs everyone who comes after her.
Join the conversation
The catsuit protected her blood circulation after she nearly died giving birth — and it was banned for “respecting the place.” Be honest: was that rule ever about tennis? And should a dress code ever override a medical need? Tell us below.
Source note: The Serena Williams catsuit account — her black full-body compression catsuit at the 2018 French Open, her first Grand Slam since giving birth on September 1, 2017; its medical purpose after a pulmonary embolism and further blood-clot complications, helping keep her blood circulating; her calling it a superhero look, dedicating it to mothers with tough recoveries, and saying it made her feel like a warrior princess from Wakanda; French Tennis Federation president Bernard Giudicelli’s August 2018 announcement that it “will no longer be accepted — one must respect the game and the place”; and the WTA’s December 2018 rulebook change expressly allowing leggings and compression shorts worn without a skirt or dress — is from the Associated Press (August 25, 2018), NPR (August 24, 2018), and BBC reporting on the WTA rule change (December 2018). The WTA change governs WTA events; the Grand Slams keep their own dress codes, and this article does not claim Roland Garros reversed itself.
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