Angela Moore fashion show adds color and cash to International Tennis Hall of Fame.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, July 8, 2011

By Tatiana Pina

Journal Staff Writer

Model: Tracy Freese of Charlotte, NC

Hat by Ann McMahon of Savoir Faire. 

NEWPORT

The International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum served up a cocktail Thursday morning of tennis, fashion, champagne and Bud Collins.

The Angela Moore fashion show and champagne breakfast, which raises money for the Hall of Fame and Museum, took place al fresco under a tent.

Women came dressed for summer — and to be seen. They wore short, sleeveless bold-print dresses in aqua, green and coral that went with their tans. They wore floral prints with light blues and yellows. A few wore broad-brimmed hats.

The wait staff wore all black, punctuated by Moore’s ties in mint, coral and light blue prints. The table linens were awash in tropical floral prints.

Having dined on grilled vegetable frittata topped with micro greens, served with fresh strawberries and pineapple, attendees sipped Bellinis — a concoction of champagne and strawberry-kiwi juice topped with a fresh plump strawberry — while watching models stride the stage to music by The Beach Boys, The Beatles and Sonny and Cher.

Designer Moore served as mistress of ceremonies in a matching aqua pant-and-top set with large white and pink flowers and a scarf-like item that resembled a red feather boa. The show included her designs and resort wear from designers including Lilly Pulitzer, Manuel Canovas, Christopher Blue, Julie Brown and Dolce Vita shoes.

Could an 82-year-old man upstage beautiful girls and women in florals and tropical colors? Collins, who covers tennis for ESPN after decades with NBC, did it by escorting 2011 Hall of Fame inductee Peachy Kellmeyer to the stage — and it didn’t hurt that Collins was wearing his trademark outrageously loud pants.

The two were like Monet contrasting with Gauguin. Kellmeyer wore a soft grass-green-and-cream print shirt and white slacks. Collins paired a lavender shirt and pants striped with purple, pink, tangerine, maroon and lavender.

“I’ve known her for 700 years. She is going to the Hall of Fame with a lesser personality — I think it’s something like Agassi,” Collins joked. Tennis great André Agassi, the last American man to win the French and Australian opens, is also being inducted.

Kellmeyer has been the backbone of women’s tennis through good and bad, when the payroll couldn’t be met, Collins said.

Born in West Virginia, Fern Lee “Peachy” Kellmeyer, 67, was a junior champion, became a star collegiate athlete, and then launched an administrative career in tennis. When she was physical education director at Marymount College in Boca Raton, Fla., in 1966, she spearheaded a lawsuit that ultimately led to the dismantling of a rule that had prohibited athletic scholarships from being awarded to women at colleges across the nation.

“I am here to represent a generation of women who worked to make tennis better,” Kellmeyer said.

The tent got a little stirred up when tennis players Denis Kudla and Michael Yani, who came to Newport to play in the Hall of Fame tournament now under way, walked onto the stage modeling tennis garb and escorting a pair of women in bold print dresses and broad-brimmed straw hats. Kudla had been the talk of the town after defeating Ivo Karlovic, known for having the fastest serve in the history of tennis, according to Anne Marie McLaughlin, the Hall of Fame’s manager of marketing and communications.

Caitlin Birch, of Cranston, doesn’t care much about tennis, but she does love fashion. She was wearing one of Moore’s designs, called the Carly dress, in greens and blues.

“This is great,” Birch said. “I love to see what new fashions they have.”

Carol Ann Brown, of Bethlehem, Conn., wore her straw hat with pink and burgundy flowers — designed by Peter Beaton of Nantucket. She and her friend, Amanda Muclé, of Bryn Mawr, Pa., who wore a black straw hat with flowers, have been coming to the fashion show since the Hall of Fame’s 50th anniversary in 2005.

Muclé said the two were staying at The Inn at Castle Hill, enjoying the beach and activities like the fashion show.

“It’s so much fun,” she said. “It’s a happening.”

tpina@projo.com