During the tournament, even the shops compete for best in show...
Two weeks before the famed Championships at the All-England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) signs of the upcoming event amidst the normally sleepy village start to emerge: American Express signs boasting all the privileges of membership appear; green-and-purple bunting pops up along the streetlamps; and out of nowhere, wooden racquets and vintage whites start to appear in storefronts everywhere.
As the first yellow Slazenger ball is served and returned on the grass, more than 70 businesses in Wimbledon are vying for a prize in the annual Wimbledon Village Tennis Windows competition . Founded in 2013 by Kimberley Salmassian, a onetime boutique owner who noticed the lack of visitors to shops during the tournament, now every year the community battles it out for various prizes while “championing their own niche business services with verbal and visual puns,” according to Salmassian. There are few rules — “businesses don’t need to have tennis racquets and balls in their windows,” Salmassian says — and most interpretations and riffs on the Wimbledon tennis theme (purple and green colours, strawberries and cream, the all-white clothing) are allowed. In the past, these have included a window painting of a John McEnroe Cartoon saying “You can’t be serious,”; an anatomical skeleton donning umpire’s regalia and juggling balls; a mannequin in barrister robe and wig behind a sign “See You in Court”; and many Thai buddhas holding balls.
Salmassian chooses ten judges from all walks of life to score each participating business according to innovation, creativity, effort and humour, then submit their top 10. Past prizes have included Centre Court tickets, dinner for two at The Ivy, luxury food and champagne hampers from Fortnum & Mason and others, beauty treatments, personal training sessions and wine-tasting experiences. “The AELTC has taken more and more of an interest with every year and even the players, too — of course they all love the Thai food,” Salmassian says. “We’ve just only come back from the Covid hangover, but we’re hitting our stride again.”