THE dress worn in the best-selling poster in history is going under the hammer.
The tennis dress with the racket and a copy of the famous poster [CATERS]More than two million copies of the provocative poster, featuring model Fiona Butler, have been sold worldwide.
It featured Fiona, now a 55-year-old freelance illustrator from Worcestershire, walking towards the net on a tennis court bathed in sunlight, hitching up the hem to reveal a bare backside.
The dress, racket and two posters are expected to fetch £2,000 when they are auctioned on July 5 – ladies’ finals day at Wimbledon. Fiona, who later married company director Ian Walker and had three children, was not officially paid for the shot. At the time she was the 18-year-old girlfriend of the photographer Martin Elliott. She had never even played tennis.
She borrowed her father’s plimsolls, the family dog’s tennis balls and the homemade dress from her friend Carol Knotts.
She said she had “no idea” the £7.99 poster would become so popular. “It never ceases to make me smile when I see it, sometimes in very strange places,” she said.
This is the most famous tennis dress of all time, yet it has never graced Centre Court
“I think my children tell people it’s me – but most people don’t believe it.”
The memorabilia is being sold by Carol, now a barrister in Gloucestershire.
She said: “Fiona was a friend and one day asked if she could borrow my dress and racket. When she returned them, she gave me a big box of chocolates as a thank-you.
“I’ve had the dress tucked away in a cupboard all these years. It’s a little piece of tennis history and I hope someone might find it an interesting novelty item.”
The photo was taken on a court at Birmingham University in 1976. Nick Davies, of Fielding Auctioneers in Stourbridge, West Midlands, said: “A generation of people will remember this poster.
“This is the most famous tennis dress of all time, yet it has never graced Centre Court. We are sure will create plenty of interest.”
Mr Elliott died in 2010, aged 63.
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