Tennis Fashion Is the Athleisure-Adjacent Trend That's About to Take Over Summer

Haney says the brand’s tennis collection originated from customer insight: It has a team dedicated to scouring all platforms to figure out what the shopper wants (the requests “run the gamut of ‘I want a specific sports bra style’ or ‘I want things for stretching,’” per Haney), which then takes its findings to the creative and design specialists—and “tennis was definitely an activity that popped for us.”

“When we first started thinking about Sport ten years ago, I knew that tennis would be an integral part of the collection,” Burch tells Glamour. In the summer she’ll hit the courts several times a week—and “for people who love tennis,” she says, “it is really part of their lives. They want designs that work on and off the court, delivering on the things that matter—comfort, fit and durability—with great style.”

According to Haney, seasonality definitely came into play when thinking about the collection, since it “drives why people want to wear the product”—the piqué material used throughout the pieces, for instance, isn’t just reminiscent of the fabrics we see on the court during tournaments, but it was also developed to be extra breathable in the face of heat, which makes it ideal for summer wear.

Outdoor Voices’ foray into tennis apparel comes hot on the heels of another tennis-adjacent milestone for the brand: the introduction of the Exercise dress. At the core of both this garment and its tennis collection is a fascination with the A-line silhouette—which Haney believes is at the root of sport’s recent come-up in summer fashion trends: There’s “an ease” to that style that translates “on all different body types,” she says, which makes it an appealing canvas for a designer.

“That A-line silhouette you traditionally find in tennis has definitely been an inspiration for us across all of Outdoor Voices,” Haney continues. “As we started thinking about dresses, a lot of [the references] came from older on-the-court [imagery] from the seventies and eighties…. In a very cool, not-super-sexy way, it emphasizes curves—it makes you look powerful and strong…. We’re really focused on leaning into feminine design while also making you feel strong, and the dress totally does that for us.”