On the ball with women's fashion at Wimbledon

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10 April 2012

Did I mention that I'm going to Wimbledon? First time e-vah. Am conflicted about who to support (is "support" the right word, or should it only be applied to football teams?): Murray on account of him being Scottish, or Rafa on account of him being buff.

I don't have a scooby about tennis, so like most clueless people my interest has thus far inevitably focused on such petty concerns as the timbre of a player's grunts (low = good, high = creepy) and how they look in their tennis whites.

Almost as vexatious a question as who to support is what to wear. I have never paid much attention to the Wimbledon spectator's attire, not least because you tend to see them only from the neck up. The girlfriends keep it insouciantly casual: Kim Sears and Brooke Mueller are strictly jeans girls. But much as Glastonbury, for some women, seems to present an opportunity to prance around in Hunter wellies and cut-off denim shorts, so, too, is Wimbledon becoming touched (or tainted, depending on your point of view) by the sprawling tentacles of fashion.

If the main trend on-court is tiny, flippy skirts with flashes of neon colour, off-court it seems to be the oversized jacket. Kirsten Dunst and her friend, the stylist Leith Clark, bowled up in near-identical black ones, while Dakota Fanning chose one in pale beige. Thrown over a tea dress, they served much the same function as a cardigan.

I realise this sounds stupid, as obviously both garments are primarily worn to keep you warm, but never have the two seemed quite so interchangeable.

It wasn't so long ago that jackets would have seemed out of place outside of the office: certainly, they would never have been teamed with something as girlish as a floral dress. But the new jacket is a different animal from the sort you might wear in the boardroom. It's slouchy, which is to say that the shoulders are a shade too wide, the hem a smidgeon too long and the fabric slightly wrinkly, as though the dog erroneously used it as a blanket. Crucially, the sleeves should manage to be rolled up: you don't have to wear them thus if your memories of Crockett and Tubbs are still too raw but your jacket should at least show potential for being worn this way insofar as the sleeves should be wide and fluid enough to shuck above the elbow.

Once you've found your cardi-jacket (my favourites this year come courtesy of Stella McCartney, Tommy Hilfiger, Studio Nicholson, and Whistles, as well as a scallop-edged blush-pink one from H&M's Conscious collection, an affordable £29), you will probably be surprised at its versatility. As well as tea dresses, it works with skinny jeans, wide-leg trousers, A-line skirts and floor-length ones - not to mention shorts. Actually, let's not mention shorts. Only Rafa and Cameron Diaz can get away with those. Happily, the cardi-jacket is a far more egalitarian beast.

Twitter: @LauraCraik

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