When Marta Kostyuk made her first appearance at this year’s tennis tournament, it was n’t just her winning match – scoring 6-3, 6-2 in straight sets with ease – that had people talking, it was also her outfit. Tennis type spotting is typically focused on those watching from the stands, with any fashionista’s annual look at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club a typical highlight on their calendar.
Marta’s light competition dress is truly beautiful and raised above another court-ready ensembles, with its plunging v-neck, cut-out back panel and subtle straps. However, there is a certain aspect of this dress that is n’t immediately obvious. Specifically, that it’s inspired by her.
The floor-length dress the Ukrainian pro, who is currently ranked 18th in the world, wore last November when she married George Kyzymenko in Cyprus, carries those same eye-catching capabilities. Wilson, an British sports products company that hired Marta as their first 360 Ambassador in 2022, brought both ideas to living.
When Marta and George first truly met, they were only four years old when they joined the same Kyiv tennis club where George, age nine, regularly played. They lost phone when he went to the US to experiment, and Marta started playing properly. Just when she returned to her native country in 2022 did they reconnect. Five months later, George proposed.
” I did n’t have any idea in mind of what I wanted the dress to look like, so I was very open to experimenting”, Marta tells Cosmopolitan UK. When we first started planning the wedding, my staff and I were just sitting on the sofa and discussing this concept. We both thought,” Why not? It would be something incredibly nice. That’s how the idea was born”.
Marta worked carefully with Joelle Michaeloff, Wilson’s mind of architecture, coming up with lots of different ideas and illustrations. The ultimate result was a very complex button-front mini dress featuring a built-in table ball ( as you’d expect in most ) with a large fabric organza retractable overlay adorned with cascading hand-appliquéd plants. Talk about future levels.
” Joelle managed to keep a golf clothing in her bridal dress, which is very great because, of course, tennis is a big part of my life. It’s my profession, it’s my work. Being able to have a little bit of that on my bridal morning was really cool, says Marta. It was” just how I wanted it,” and it was very pleasant and lighting. It was very specific when I tried it on for my wedding day. It’s a one-of-a-kind”.
Any wedding will tell you that having just one chance to wear your wedding gown. With Marta’s now presenting factors that may easily be incorporated into professional-level golf dress, it was an obvious next step for her. So her souped-up-for-serving imitation of her bridal dress made it to the Wimbledon authorities. The decorative embellishments were removed, and the overlayer costume was reduced to a shorter length. After the meeting for the reception, Marta was able to replace the switch detailing, just as she did the original layer after the service. The only adjustments to her dress’s new iteration were some built-in ball shorts and a slightly higher neckline.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that, unlike Marta’s wedding dress, the tennis dresses are available for purchase via Wilson’s website. Marta acknowledges that it took her a moment to get her head around.
” It was kind of a strange feeling because this dress was initially just made for me as my wedding dress. It was just my dress, and then suddenly many people will be sporting it. It’s a super cool experience but at the same time a very interesting feeling because]designing it ] felt like a very intimate process”, she explains. However, once she’d had enough time to digest Wilson’s suggestion to sell it at a discount, what happened? ” It’s an incredible feeling at the end of the day”, she concludes.
The Marta Dress can be purchased both as and as.
” I think after Wimbledon is over, I will put this dress in a frame and hang it on the wall somewhere”, Marta says. One of the highlights of my life and my career will undoubtedly be this. I mean, what else can you ask for”?
Alexandria Dale is a Digital Fashion Editor for Cosmopolitan &. There’s nothing she loves more than discovering a high street dupe of a must-have designer item, which covers everything from the important things to the most recent fashion news. She is passionate about and establishing the trends that are actually worthwhile investing in in addition to discovering new brands. She has six years of experience working in fashion journalism, including stints at Glamour and Ok!