Newton had to notice the apple fall to discover gravity, a discovery that would go on to form the basis for centuries of other inventions. But what if the apple had fallen on someone else's head that day, someone whose name never made it into the history books? Would gravity still bear his name?
Imagine the first person who stepped out of the water shivering, realising he needed something more than the piece of clothing that gave him no warmth.
That instinct of wiping away what clings to us is probably the oldest human gesture there is. Long before anyone patented or wove patterns onto a towel, someone out there invented the idea out of pure discomfort.
This is the story we tell ourselves about invention: a man invents something, it becomes his, and his name goes on it. History remembers him forever. But then someone comes along with a better marketing strategy and takes the idea somewhere else.
And in like manner, it is also the story of the Wimbledon towel that gets draped over legends like Novak Djokovic's shoulders on Centre Court every July.
Our question. Why is someone else taking credit for it without acknowledging the true owners?
Where it all started
The British heritage brand Christy, founded in 1850 and known for making the softest bath towels the world has ever felt (Christy, 2026), has been in the business of making the Wimbledon towels since 1987.
The brand, known for producing the first towel presented to the British Queen and for gracing hotel bathrooms for over a century, had already been the official towel supplier of the Wimbledon Championships for twenty years by the time everything changed.
In 2006, it was acquired by Welspun, an Indian textile company, and production moved from the UK to Gujarat, India. The towels made their India debut in 2010, when the first batch after the acquisition was produced (Robb Report India, 2026; Friday Wall, 2026).
It was a typical business deal on paper: an Indian conglomerate buys a storied British heritage brand. But this time, the transition from England to India happened quietly, almost unnoticed.
For over fifteen years, the towel, tucked into a player's kit bag as they stroll off court, draped over their necks, or thrown into the crowd in an uproar of excitement, has been manufactured at Welspun's Vapi facility in Gujarat's Valsad district.
The name on it still reads Christy, and the heritage story, as old as time, dates back to when the company was founded. But few know that the hard work and labour behind it belong to India.
Producing Wimbledon's towel is an extremely cautious process, as the details on the towels take a whole eighteen months to achieve. The technique, as Goenka, CEO of Christy, describes in Robb Report, uses premium cotton in a yarn-dyed jacquard weave, where the coloured yarns are woven directly into the fabric rather than printed onto the surface.
Special attention is paid to the colour, the weave, and how the towel will be presented to the world, because once a design is locked in, it takes close to a week to finish one towel.
The towels differ for the men's and women's Championships. The men have always stuck to the same Wimbledon green and purple stripes, one of the earliest designs from Christy, while the women enjoy a variety of colours each year. According to Christy and the Wimbledon Shop, the 2026 colour shade is a warm strawberry red, paying homage to Wimbledon's obsession with strawberries and cream.
But the real star of the show is Christy's (now Welspun-owned) HygroCotton® spinning technology, woven in for extra softness and absorbency, the only functional reason an athlete would trust their sweat to a piece of cloth in the first place.
The brand isn't only weaving cotton for athletes' comfort; it has also invested in sustainability. The towels carry Oeko-Tex's MADE IN GREEN certification, use FSC-certified packaging, and are made from cotton sourced through the Better Cotton Initiative, part of Welspun's push to eliminate plastic packaging.
The Wimbledon towel is more than mere merchandise, as players and guests watching the matches all look forward to sneaking one out. For this reason, players are formally asked to return them after their matches.
Almost none of them do. An estimated 2,500 towels sneak out of the grounds per tournament, tucked away by a ball boy or girl, or sitting pretty inside someone's bag, with as many as 500 disappearing daily during Championship week (Friday Wall, 2026).
What has changed since then
Wimbledon's story is one where originality and decades of work have gone into making perfection: the idea, the weaving, the crest, the workmanship. But it is also a story told mostly from one perspective, England's, with little said of the other, India's.
These two nations have merged into one to build something beautiful, with one bringing years of hard work and industry heritage, while the other brings the infrastructure and technology to keep it moving forward.
When people talk about the craft that goes into creating the Wimbledon towel, the credit is centred on England, even though the production happens in India. It is worth sitting with this: in a year when no Indian player features at the Championships, there is still a piece of the nation in the hands of every player on Centre Court.
While everyone associates the towel with the British, the hands that made them are not, and maybe that's the best way to actually tell the story of invention: the story of the ones who did all the work, not just the one standing under the tree when the apple fell.
References:
- Christy. (2026a, June). The Wimbledon Championships towel: A design evolution through decades [Blog post].
https://www.christy.co.uk - Christy. (2026b, June). The 2026 Wimbledon towel collection: A new era of design [Blog post].
https://www.christy.co.uk - Friday Wall. (2026, July). The story behind Wimbledon's iconic towels: Made in Gujarat since 2009.
https://www.fridaywall.com - News Daily24. (2026, July). Wimbledon towels made in India: How a Gujarat factory crafts the Championship's most iconic souvenir.
https://newsdaily24.in - Robb Report India. (2026, July). Wimbledon towels made in Gujarat: The Christy–Welspun partnership behind a global keepsake.
https://www.robbreportindia.com - Welspun Living. (2025). Luxury towels with a legacy: Welspun & Wimbledon [Blog post].
https://www.welspunliving.com - Wimbledon Shop. (2026a). The Championship 2026 seasonal cotton bath towel 70x133cm.
https://shop.wimbledon.com - Wimbledon Shop. (2026b). The Championships 2026 classic cotton bath towel 70x133cm.
https://shop.wimbledon.com. . .