Recently, I was discussing tennis with the mother of a girl in my daughter’s kindergarten class: when the children might take lessons, where they might, the benefits of being able to play ... And to the long list of positives (socialisation, hand-eye co-ordination), she added, “Plus, the outfits are so great.”

To be honest, outfits are not the first thing that occurs when I think of why it might be good to introduce my six-year-old to racquet sports, but she does have a point. Certainly, some of the abbreviated frocks currently being sported at Wimbledon make for interesting viewing. Thus far, I have been particularly partial to Serena Williams’ mini-trench. It wasn’t like that when I was a girl.

There is another reason why my viewing has taken on a peculiarly personal dimension: I have suddenly been faced with the issue of what to wear while engaged in physical activity. After 12 fairly inactive years in London, I have returned to the city of gym-goers – it was New York that gave the world the sneakers-with-suit-in-the-morning look, for good or ill (well, mostly for ill, speaking from a style perspective). And though I have yet to go back to an aerobics class, I have found myself, at 41, suddenly enamoured of a – well, not exactly a sport but a sort of athletic endeavour: trapeze.

It began when I took our eight-year-old to a class, and they let the parents get up and do a knee-hang, and I felt a surge of what I can only describe as joy swinging upside down on a bar many feet above a giant mat. From then on we were hooked. For me, the appeal is both gymnastic – there’s something intellectually interesting about controlling your body in the air – and unabashedly childlike: this is the same stuff I used to do on the playground. And because momentum does most of the work for you, it doesn’t actually require that much strength.

But it does require an outfit. And I as discovered when I signed up for my second class, I didn’t have one.

Since I was a notably unco-ordinated child, and ever after had a sense of myself as a non-sporty person, sports clothing has never really been a part of my life. I did teach aerobics in college to make money, and I had some leftover leggings and leotards but, on fishing them out of the back of the wardrobe and trying them on, I discovered the ensuing 20 years had made them pretty well unwearable. I know the aerobics thing is hard to imagine but I also used to smoke a cigarette right after class, so I was never a full-blown Fonda-ite, and after graduation I soon quit bouncing. The smoking took a little longer, probably because I enjoyed it more.

In any case, as I enter middle age, I find myself in the weird position of having to develop a part of my wardrobe I had never really thought about before. It hasn’t been so easy. For my first class, I wore the only leggings I had that fitted: a pair by Azzedine Alaïa. This was clearly not something that could continue. The price/use ratio was unattractive.

. . .

Being a firm believer in the “when in Rome” approach to dressing, I scouted the class to see what the real trapeze people were wearing. But given that the deputy director had a specially made unitard with flames up the side, and the women who worked with him had negative body fat, this proved to be not so useful. Besides, I soon discovered I was not only on the older side for the activity, I was, in fact, the oldest person in the room.

This was a new situation for me, and I’m sure at some point I will look back on it as pivotal but for now, it just meant I needed to go elsewhere for sartorial advice. I didn’t want to adopt the leggings-and-oversize-T-shirt look that seems the fallback of post-childbirth women everywhere (try hanging upside down in an oversize T-shirt; it’s not a good idea). On the other hand, body-hugging clothing was also not appealing. My usual fallbacks – my professional contacts – couldn’t help much. Designers have done a lot for many sports, from tennis to football and golf, but trapeze isn’t one of them.

I can understand this to a certain extent. Fashion is interested in the visible, in what can make a big impact, and for that it needs public sports, and sporting stars who are known, the likes of David Beckham and Anna Kournikova.

Still, I also think there is a certain lack of imagination involved. Just think of the kudos that could accrue to a designer for outfitting Cirque du Soleil, and then think of the niche they could develop. Balmain, for example, is already all about sparkle and stretch; this could be a natural brand extension. Or what about Pucci, which has a real history in the art of the legging? And then there’s Celine, where Phoebe Philo is developing an entire aesthetic from the ground up. After the basic wardrobe and the ski wardrobe, why not the circus wardrobe?

There’s a market in there, I know it. Le customer, c’est moi.

vanessa.friedman@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/friedman