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Sporting style
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You also need to look good to turn heads at Olympics
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Brazilian Flavia Cazziolato makes a splash with her swimsuit that would put a peacock to shame.
WHEN IT comes to fashion, the Olympics are synonymous with form-fitting tracksuits and uniforms so tight they reveal the athletes' childhood scars. We watch them all compete, even while dutifully rooting for our country, absorbing the spectacle of the Olympics and envying those well-toned bodies.
The most striking difference between today's Olympics and the ancient one is that the audience has changed from being a culture that loved to watch their young men compete not for medals but for a sprig of olive or bunch of wild celery. Also, what you wear (or don't) at the Olympics has been, well, redressed. We can imagine Plato, noted fan of ancient Greek athletics, providing colour commentary at Athens: "Why in Zeus's name are they wearing clothes?" he might ask, with no intention of being sarcastic.
Fashion story
Woven into the conventional Lycra is an Olympic-sized fashion story spanning more than 100 years of triumphs and failures. Basketball jerseys no longer flap around clumsily as lanky players dribble away at the D. Girls' hockey teams wear smart little skirts that a far cry from yester-Olympics' large shorts that looked like hand-me-downs from the boys' team. Swimmers lap for the gold, never having to worry about water sloshing about inside their ill-fitting swimsuits again. Athletes have more heads turning as they make power strides in spandex that seems to have replaced their skin.
It all started right in Athens, 1896, when Greek marathon champ Spyridon Louis took the top spot on the podium wearing a traditional pleated skirt, a body-hugging embroidered vest and knee-high boots that would look at home in any Marilyn Manson video. In the days when the Olympics committees wouldn't dream that sportspersons would change anything but their hairstyles, there was no strict dress code. Thus the debut of the flowing, knee-length dress and demure sun visor worn by tennis player Helen Wills, who brilliantly won both the single and doubles events in Paris, 1934. And here we are, crediting the Williams sisters for everything from cap to shoe. Another historical textile moment was in Helsinki, 1952, when the Hungarian water polo team posed for the Olympic photos in matching bathrobes and bare chests. That year, women all over embraced water polo.
What the fashion gurus would like to forget though, are moments when Canadian golf Olympian George Lyon teed off in a straw boater hat and oversized blazer in St. Louis. Also, taking a style cue from Superman, designer Hanae Mori, in Barcelona, made a controversial addition to the Japanese Olympic team's uniform: a cape. Not surprisingly, this concept didn't fly in fashion circles. And though there are reasons deeper than fashion sacrilege for it, our Indian hockey team's bare-footed game too was not in step with the world's notions of the Olympic game.
Nagano is widely considered the beginning of Olympic apparel's influence over mainstream fashion. The story goes thus: to compensate for their uniforms a decade earlier, the Canadian team had wowed the world in 1998 with cutting-edge, poor-boy hats. The headgear created international consumer hysteria and quickly became the fashion must-have of the season for athletes and fashionistas alike.
Designers score
Now fashion designers and sportswear brands are trying to score wins at the games too, and their contest is as competitive as the matches among the world's top athletes. High-end brands such as Chanel, Ralph Lauren, and Gucci have presented sports-inspired clothes and accessories — tennis balls on string shoes, silk track pants, "sophisticated" reinterpretations of tennis outfits, and prints of medals on handbags.
Flo Jo blazed the tracks in more ways than one.
But it's sports gear brands Adidas, Nike, Puma and Le Coq Sportif that are the frontrunners with their authentic sportswear. Track tops, hot pants, tube tops, bags, and shoes have all been relaunched. Following the red wave of World Cup football, the Games have inspired stripes in Olympic colours and prints of the Roman numerals of 2004.
Nike showroom manager Manas Debkar says: "In India, every other sport fights for the place that cricket has. And only some more achievements like Rathore's silver will get us to watch Olympics without surfing channels." And since that's a lot harder, looking good at the Olympics is the easiest way to get people to watch something besides cricket.
ROHINI MOHAN
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