Style Points Flashback: Serena Williams wears banned Cameroon kit at 2002 Roland Garros

WATCH: The Break: Fashion Review at Roland Garros

Who wore what? Style Points breaks down the latest collabs, kits and fashion statements from around the tennis world.

Twenty years ago this month, two of the biggest sporting events on the global calendar converged when the 2002 World Cup took place during the same weeks as Roland Garros.

True to form, Serena Williams understood the assignment perfectly.

The 20-year-old, then ranked world No. 3 and still outfitted by Puma, arrived in the French capital seeking her second Grand Slam title. But like most players, she had the World Cup on her mind, too—and so did her sponsors.

During her opening two matches at Roland Garros, Serena showed her support for the Cameroonian national team with a custom tennis kit inspired by the same controversial Puma uniforms that Samuel Eto’o and the Indomitable Lions wore in Korea and Japan.

“All Serena Williams was missing were the shin guards,” the Los Angeles Times wrote at the time.

Indeed, Serena looked like she could have gone from Stade Roland-Garros directly to Stade de France, as she rocked a sleeveless green dress trimmed with red, black and yellow, which prominently featured the Cameroon crest. The look was completed with a pair of red peekaboo undershorts, yellow high socks, matching green and yellow shoes, and a coordinating headband.

“Since I always wear sleeveless things, Puma came up with this idea for me during the French Open to wear the Cameroon outfit, which is really exciting,” Serena explained during a post-match press conference.

Serena had even requested to wear the number 26, a nod to her birthdate, on the back of her dress but the request was denied by tournament organizers.

“I was reading an article where it says that Cameroon is everyone’s favorite team,” she added. “[Even] if you’re supporting England, a lot of people have this love for Cameroon because they’re always fighting so much it seems. They’re the best African team.”

While newspapers at the time reported that Serena had “shocked traditionalists” with the head-turning outfit in Paris, Cameroon's kits also caused a stir in Korea and Japan too.

For extremely boring reasons, FIFA banned the Cameroonian squad from wearing their signature sleeveless shirts. (“They’re not shirts, they’re vests,” said a FIFA spokesperson at the time.) When the Lions arrived on the World Cup stage, players still wore the same shirts—but with black sleeves under their “vests” in protest.

Much like team Cameroon, Serena made a sartorial switcheroo of her own after the opening rounds in Paris.

She swapped the soccer-inspired kit for a shimmering black and gold number with gold trim and matching shoes from the third round until the final, where she clinched the first of her career's three Roland Garros victories, and the second Grand Slam in what would become an Open Era-record haul of 23 singles titles.

But it wouldn’t be the last time that outfits worn by Cameroon or by Serena generated controversy.

Cameroon were fined $154,000 and docked six points from their 2006 World Cup qualifying campaign for wearing one-piece green and red Puma bodysuits—this time with sleeves—which FIFA president Sepp Blatter said were “against the laws of the game”.

Fast-forward to 2018, and Serena’s own sleek black Nike bodysuit was also banned from Roland Garros for not “respect[ing] the game and the place,” according to FFT president Bernard Giudicelli. The debacle echoed the scandalized reaction Serena had received at the 2002 US Open, when she wore a sleeveless, short black leather catsuit by Puma that caused a stir en route to winning the title.

Regardless of what exactly sleeves and bodysuits have to do with laws and respect for the game, one thing is clear: Puma was throwing down some iconic tennis and football outfits in the early-to-mid 2000s. It’s a shame that while the German brand has remained deeply entrenched in football, they’ve pulled away from professional tennis entirely—leaving fans to only wonder about the kinds of kits that could have shaken up center courts around the world in recent years.

(Puma, if you’re out there… come back?)