Even the Wimbledon traditionalist Roger Federer thinks they've gone too far with the all-white thing

PARIS – For this French Open, Roger Federer is lit up like a My Little Pony Christmas tree.

Candy colours, to some. The only two hues little girls’ clothes come in, to others. The WTA Tour logo colours, to others still.

But in a few weeks, when the seven-time champion hits the lawns of the All-England Club, he knows the party will be over.

And, in discussing fashion in the city that’s famous for it Sunday, Federer couldn’t resist getting in a dig at the overzealousness of the tournament’s “all-white” rule in recent years.

Federer, of course, might well have been the catalyst for the tightening of the all-white rules when he – GASP! – showed up two years ago with orange soles on his white Nike sneakers.

The omnipotent committee told the Swiss maestro that he had to change his shoes, simple as that. No argument. Now, Nike probably knew this might happen, so they got great traction (pardon the pun) out of that one-off appearance.

The stories circulating at the time said that the clothing manufacturers had to submit their projected outfits to the club 90 days beforehand for approval. But quite clearly, last year, a LOT of things fell through the cracks. Genie Bouchard and the other Nike players had to switch out their visors, which had black underneath the bill.

Perhaps the companies thought the tournament would be indulgent, as it has been in recent years as the amount of non-white pushed the boundaries just a little bit further each time. A tournament spokesman told Eh Game last year that the rules hadn’t changed in a long, long time, but that perhaps it was incumbent on them to reiterate to the players (who received the guidelines in their player packages) that they were going to enforce them.

This led to some fairly crazy happenings in 2014, some scrambling from a lot of the players because the non-white trim on their outfits exceeded the 10-millimetre limit. Nike was an offender. So was Lacoste. That meant Canadian Aleksandra Wozniak had go to out in borrowed adidas attire when she got a cherished centre-court assignment against Dominika Cibulkova.

Her original Lacoste clothes didn’t meet the standards, and the replacement clothes didn’t arrive in time.

Even out on a field court, in a women’s doubles match, the chair umpire halted the start of the match because of wardrobe issues, which led China’s Shuai Peng to run all the way back to the locker room to get something that passed muster.

She and partner Su-Wei Hsieh were laughing, that’s how incredulous they were. It almost seemed as though the officials had to pay more attention to a couple of extra millimetres of trim than they did officiating the matches. They probably felt like school principals.

Here's what the scene looked like.

Grand Slam supervisor Brian Earley told Eh Game at the time that the umpires and officials were at the point where they had to tell women players they couldn’t wear pastel bras underneath their shirts, which meant the officials had to carefully scrutinize each sports bra-wearing player for possible code violations.

“I think what got to them were the black sports bras underneath white shirts. With the perspiration, it would look terrible,” Earley said. “I agree it looked terrible, but …”

A Wimbledon spokesman told Reuters last year that coloured undergaments were fine,"provided it is no longer than their shorts or skirt." Apparently not.

Last August, the All-England Club put out a specific set of guidelines that went well beyond their blanket “Including the warm-up period, players at Wimbledon must be dressed almost entirely in white.”

Here’s what it looks like. It’s pretty specific, and includes that bit about the sweaty appearances of the coloured sports bras (item 9).

Of course, common standards of decency are required at all times. Naturellement.

In a few weeks, we’ll see how well the clothing manufacturers can read.