Wimbledon Royal Box Wrap: Kate, William, Beckham, McIlroy, Stan Smith

When the All England Lawn Tennis And Croquet Club say “jacket and club tie,” screen man Dustin Hoffman is spot-on resplendent in an rock-solid blue blazer, sky blue shirt and club tie. Admirably, Hoffman has no one “dress him;” he simply meets the occasion and his circumstance in it. Kudos. Taking in the breathtaking Jannik Sinner-Alexander Zverev men’s singles final in the row before Hoffman, Catherine, the Princess of Wales, patron of Wimbledon and her daughter Charlotte. A heady mix, this year’s Royal Box.

Just a few rows away from Hoffman and England’s future queen on July 12, Australian Nicole Kidman wins the ladies’ award in a boardroom-ready double-breasted cream blazer with a tie, over a tidy bone-white trouser. The little whiff of a breath of pink on the tie is the killer in this kit. The big straw fedora is a nice touch, too, but Dianne Keaton’s era-setting Annie Hall character this is not. More like, a Pedro Almodóvar or a Bond villainess about to run an amazing scam that may leave a number of bodies strewn through the landscape for the police to puzzle over. However that fictive narrative works out doesn’t matter. The point is that, on this clothes horse, the jacket brings something a lot bigger than itself.

Pictured above, the authoritative steel-blue suited gentleman casting a practiced eye on the Sinner/Zverev final from the very center of the second row of this excellent photograph by Clive Brunskill, wears a tell-tale tie in the rich green-and-purple All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club colors. This is none other than 1972 Wimbledon men’s singles champion and former World No. 1, Stan Smith. Yes, that Stan Smith, five-time doubles Slam champion. Yes, that Stan Smith, a pair of whose eponymous Adidas you probably own, or should own. Taking in the action provided by his countryman Zverev from the rail below Smith, that is German Chancellor Friedrich Merz behind that elegant pair of shades. Just by way of evincing the broad sweep of the invitations that go out from the Royal Box.

Earlier in what the British call “The Fortnight” of Wimbledon, bearing her trademark no-fuss elegance and looking imperviously at home in her go-to ice blue, Queen Camilla arrived in Wimbledon’s Royal Box on Centre Court on July 8, with her sister Annabel Elliot. The Queen – pictured top seated in front of actress Elle Fanning – was there to watch the women’s singles quarterfinal, in which Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk handily dispatched Italy’s Jasmine Paolini in straight sets, 6-3, 6-2.

But, hold on a second! Who’s this insouciant fellow stripped down to his “business-casual” single-cuff shirtsleeves behind the Queen? How dare he? Asked another way, is there a British man alive who would remove his jacket one row behind the Queen in the Wimbledon Royal Box? Answer: No! The All-England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Association has decreed jacket-and-tie at all times since time immemorial, period, – "thank you very much, indeed," as the British say when they’re trying to brush someone off.

Ergo: This shockingly – shockingly – jacket-less interloper, luxuriating in his own comfort inches from the Queen, can by definition only be 1) an Australian, 2) Kiwi, 3) American, or perhaps, 4) “a Continental.” But the Europeans and the members of the Commonwealth usually mind their dress at Wimbledon! In fact, this is a protocol-smashing American, in the form of Rolling Stone magazine scion Gus Wenner, looking every bit Wall-Street-Semi-Casual-Friday, circa 1996. The All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club directors do not like or want (or permit) any piece of that anywhere near the monarchs. Yet here we are.

Now at executive of his own investment vehicle, the otherwise wholly respectable Wenner has, also, dated fellow American Fanning for the last two years, much to the delight of the running dogs of the English press who chase that sort of thing. In keeping with his own alt-press heritage, however, Mr. Wenner does seem a club-able Rebel, Rebel – to mangle David Bowie, an artist featured often on the cover of the publication founded by Mr. Wenner’s father, Jann, back in the wild and woolly heyday of 1960s San Francisco.

If young Gus could be persuaded to put the jacket back on, twisting around in his seat on the down-low, his girlfriend’s chances at another Royal Box invitation in future years, should she find herself filming or playing in something in Britain, would improve. But at the moment, the box has been ticked and surely registered. Boyfriends, what can an ingenue do? Surely he had the thing when he walked in, otherwise, no go in the Royal Box, baby.

Things could get worse. Neither of these Americans hail from the deep South, where more rigorously delineated forms of address are still in currency, and both lovebirds seem as if they might have only ever heard the word “ma’am” used by actors in a period drama, much less having employed it themselves when not reading from a script. Fortunately for them, the tennis seems to be wholly absorbing the Queen, not her neighbors. One certainty remains: Had the Queen addressed them, a Royal Box usher would have been there in a nano-second to advise the man to don the jacket.

In stark contrast to men who may not have fully absorbed the fine print on disrobing in the Wimbledon Royal Box, pictured above, here’s the recently knighted Sir David Beckham, impeccably done in a fine worsted peak-lapel double-breasted, with nary a button save that last, properly-unbuttoned lower right jacket button undone. His bright summery pocket square is his personal air conditioning. He’s escorting his mother Sandra as per his habit, Sandra Beckham being a solid tennis fan.

Pictured above in his semifinal match on July 10, Wimbledon’s eventual runner-up Alexander Zverev gracefully serves to England’s breakout star Arthur Féry in the process of setting up Sunday’s men’s final against Jannik Sinner. Possibly the most entertaining British wildcard in the last century or so of Wimbledon, Arthur “Cross Channel” Féry – recently so nicknamed by Fleet Street because of his dual French/British nationality – has grittily fought his way into the semifinals and along the way has become the runaway crowd favorite. He’s a shot-snagger, agile, all over the court, and his French professional tennis-player mom just happens to live a couple of miles from Wimbledon, where he attended King’s College School. Currently, thanks to his breakout run during this Wimbledon, Féry is the No. 1 ranked British player (with two stellar French coaches). None other than the Queen dropped through the players’ ready-room en route into the Royal Box on July 8, tapping young Féry on the shoulder for a word.

According to the reports – which is to say, this is the microscopic level of the Fleet Street reporting on him now – his “British childhood” and schooling enabled him to deliver the proper “Yes, ma’am.” He’s confessed to that highly attentive press that, during the tournament, he returned home, where his mom cooked for him each night, as, to “get away from the tennis a bit,” Féry worked his way through Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather cycle.

Pictured above, golf royalty showed in the Royal Box early in The Fortnight in the form of Tommy Fleetwood, looking every inch as if he had possibly just come from being cast as King Henry V in an upcoming epic centered around the Battle of Agincourt.

The specific blue-green of Augusta National’s club jacket is recognizable from several hundred miles away, and two-time Master’s winner Rory McIlroy certainly seems aware of that as he stands with his wife Erica Stoll to receive accolades from the court, in this instance, from none other a player than Novak Djokovic, who called McIlroy out from the court after winning his mens’ singles second-round match on day two of the All England Fortnight.

Joseph Fiennes, who looks as if he actually did just snag that role of Henry V at Agincourt, teaches a master class in the Wimbledon cream-on-cream ensemble in his magisterial double breasted. Nothing to add here, and nothing to subtract – Fiennes landed his kit’s arrow dead in the center of the target. Why so much cream at Wimbledon? It’s the traditional sartorial and the gustatory refresher. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club estimates that 200,000 portions of strawberries and cream – the strawberries coming fresh each morning from the Hugh Lowe family farm in Mereworth, some 30 miles away – are sold each year.

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