When Tennis meets Fashion: Sharapova French Open Dress: What I think

Right here are two rumored dresses that Sharapova will be wearing for the 2010 Roland Garros. Although I'm not a big fan of her tennis (though sometimes I feel like her when I'm playing, can't put a serve in while my groundstrokes are rocking), I AM a fan of her fashion choices (most of them at least, just don't remind me of that mess of a swan dress at Wimbledon...eek). I think she gets ridiculed for trying to be daring, but IMO, her daring is far better than some other's crazy and some other's boring.

Since most of y'all have probably seen this picture somewhere, I won't write down what it's made of and all the PR blah blah blah; I'm just going to say how much I like the first one and why I'm ambivalent about the second one.

The first wrap dress is simpler, black and silver has a certain chic factor to it, and I like the fact that silver is the base color instead of black, which makes the dress look lighter. The proportion is dead on with a certain Origami feel to the pleating and roughing. The waist is cinched while the length looks perfectly balanced. It's important for wrap dresses to have good proportion in order to not look like two pieces of fabric wrapped around you. This dress is the quintessential party dress, so hopefully Sharapova will be mostly celebrating while wearing this at the French. The neckline seems pretty and it gives off a certain maturity and class. BUT, this dress has the potential to be a disaster in real life; the volumn might look nice on paper, but it come off as overly fashion-y and pretencious on court. The downfall for a fashion forward tennis dress is that the moment it crosses the line and stop being believable as sportswear, that's when it loses respect (despite how great it is) and waves of criticisms will crash the shore like a giant tsunami. So good luck with this one, b/c I really like it.

And the second dress, well..I'm "meh" about it. I see how they're continuing the print motif, which is important because it's now a Sharapova "collection". But, since the first version at AO got some serious mixed reviews, I'm not sure if I like this one also. The color choice is indeed far better, and I like how it creates the illusion of a wrap dress, but the print still reminds me of wallpaper, this time it's just looks like a 5 years old's room. The curvature on the front panel will either gives off a slim figure, or it'll just make Maria's body looks twisted. The purple looks a little too 80's (at least three seasons too late, and for Maria, who's "fashion-ed", this can count as a crime to her fashionistas supporters). Besides being 80's ish, the color isn't dark enough, and it makes the fabric look cheap. I also don't think Maria should wear speghetti straps anymore. She has gained muscle mass around her shoulder since her superstar arrival to the tennis scene in Wimbledon 2004, and a big shoulder will only be more obvious to the eyes in a pair of speghetti straps.

So yea, all in all, these are two solid dresses that is definitely Maria-esque, and it should do well along with her Tiffany & Co. earrings. I'll have to wait to see the 2nd one worn by her until I can make a more concrete judgement.

I'll probably write a review on Serena's FO outfit soon.