Ted Tinling: Tennis’ Needle and Thread

The Body Serve

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

More description

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

2022-06-20 73 min
Listen elsewhere

Available Results

Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Transcript

No transcript is available for this episode yet.
Sign in to generate a transcript for review.
Sign in

Chapters

No chapters available.