Monica Rich Kosann & Chris Evert's Tennis Bracelet Collection

Chris Evert can perfectly picture the time she lost her diamond bracelet. She was on the court at the U.S. Open in 1978. Play was halted. “I guess it caused quite the spectacle! After the match I walked off the court for my interview, and they asked me about it, and I said, ‘Oh, that was my tennis bracelet.’ I remember everything about that day. The green court. The white lines. My diamond bracelet and the dripping sweat of competition.” And that, to finally set the record straight, is how the jewelry classic got its name. The row of stones called the tennis bracelet owes it all to Evert, but until recently she usually let her role in its origin go unmentioned. Even jewelry people were unsure of its history. “I had no idea it was Chrissie,” says Monica Rich Kosann. “I just accepted the name ‘tennis bracelet.’ I assumed it referred to the fact that the design was simple enough that you could play sports in it.”

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Chris Evert.

Kosann is an expert at taking familiar stories and making us look again—see her reimagined lockets and posey rings—so when Evert wanted to create what Kosann calls the “real, authentic tennis bracelet,” one clearly attached to the woman behind the myth, she contacted the designer, who listened closely to Evert’s memories of the moment. “Monica always talks about how her jewelry serves as a woman’s ‘daily armor’ and is meant to empower and inspire her,” Evert says. “My hope is that the tennis bracelets we created together can be that daily armor.” The lines were already there in the tennis bracelet design, but the drops of sweat became pear-shaped diamonds in this modern classic. The green of the court? Not grass. Emeralds.

Top: Monica Rich Kosann tennis bracelets (from $2,655), monicarichkosann.com. Prop stylist: Miako Katoh. Fashion & Accessories Director: Dania Lucero Ortiz.

This story appears in the September 2022 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW