Ted Tinling: Tennis’ Needle and Thread

Cuthbert Collingwood "Ted" Tinling was a man whose unlikely story threads throughout the eras of twentieth century tennis like no one else's. A product of a patrician English family who moved to the French Riviera, Ted found himself umpiring for Suzanne Lenglen at 13 years old. He would grow to become a successful London couturier in the interwar period, and in the late 1940s found tennis pulling him back, this time as a designer of tennis fashion. Tinling wed ultra-feminine design with functionality, creating outfits unique to each wearer and which emphasized the need for sportswear to work and move like a tennis player. Much has been written about his rebellious nature and his banishment from Wimbledon -- and we certainly cover that -- but we're also interested in the contradictions of a man with great respect for the codes of tennis tradition but who repeatedly strained against it.

 

0:45 Ted Tinling: tennis’ great multihyphenate 

7:20 The Tinlings move from Eastbourne to the Riviera, the hotbed of Jazz Age tennis

11:55 Suzanne Lenglen, France’s homegrown superstar 

16:45 The end of his Riviera boyhood – from child umpire to Mayfair couturier

20:40 Post-war: a revolution in colour

23:45 Tinling and Dior’s New Look - a regression or a rebellion? (Or both?)

27:35 The panties that altered history

36:45 The 1960s: Tinling as the premier designer of women’s tennis

42:50 You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

48:25 The Tinling Slam: all four plus the Battle of the Sexes

53:20 Wimbledon Act II: Back in the Club

56:20 Infinite sites of rebellion - chipping away at tennis’ strictures 

63:10 A few more stories we want to tell: Elizabeth Ryan and Bill Tilden