A chorus line of perky Chinese volunteers (as though Gap greeters had been cross-bred with Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders) wore flippy white pleated tank dresses and kept up their kicks, claps and enthusiasm for over two hours as athletes from 204 countries filed in. They were too busy playing glee club to track the many fashion trends on the international runway of the Parade of Nations, so let's do it for them.
Culture Club
There was so much piping, the Beijing Olympics refrain could be, “yachting, anyone?" Many countries sent out sailors and private school students with crests and heraldry adorning the breast of their sports jackets. From Polo Ralph Lauren’s genteel Gatsby does Chariots of Fire-inspired USA team (above) in knotted cravats and ascots (Thurston Howell III from Gillian's Island for their three-hour stadium tour?) to Macedonia, to Japan’s white trousers and navy jackets trimmed in brass admiral buttons (below), it was the sporting life of a bygyone country club era. The Dutch went grey with white piping, Israel wore white denim trousers with Breton stripe polos, Ukraine did it in blue trimmed with yellow, Belarus piped on white and France did it in grey with red thread-trimmed buttonholes. Poland upped the sartorial with dark navy jackets trimmed in contrasting cream buttons and cream-stitched buttonholes. Ahoy, captain!
Glam
There was a glint of glitter, too: India’s regal gold and red scarves (bottom), Uzbekistan’s Lurex-flecked ties and metallic fabric panels folded into the female athletes’ skirts; Indonesia’s silk jacquard trim and overskirts enlivened the gravitas of their black on black ensembles. The Guatemalan ladies flashed tanned, toned flesh in embroidered peasant blouses worn off the shoulder.
Colour
The fall fashion runways may be grey, black and more black but when you need to be seen in a crowd, you have to make like The Queen and stand out with colour. And from Gambia’s periwinkle blue and Malaysia's creamsicle orange to Lithuania’s grasshopper green polos paired with long white shorts and Estonia’s dayglo orange, acid yellow and blue palette, many did. There was especially a lot of yellow, like tunic coats for Jamaica, again with Ecuador, both paired with black for a bumblebee palette (maybe Jerry Seinfeld was their stylist?) and Yemen.
Pattern
Papua New Guinea’s block-print batik stripes were traditional and eye-catching, while Mozambique went with Madras plaid dresses, Angola was in bright kaleidoscope batik and the Hungarian ladies did bold red and white blossom-prints from head to toe. Uruguay’s guys wore goldenrod and blue polka dotted ties but the best dots were polka-dotted red dress shirts worn by Mauritius. They looked ready to rock a disco in St. Tropez.
Retro
The Chinese athletes sported wide, stiff spread collars pulled out over jacket lapels--basically, Tony Manero’s Saturday night uniform translated into Mao red and gold (bottom). (Plain, and not very imaginative: even Ronald Mcdonald did better with this colour combo.) Cuba’s tan leisure suits were Casual Friday, circa 1953 (so were Madagascar's beige safari outfits). And many --too many-- full pleated tan slacks said Welcome to your Dockers Years: it’s 1994.
Hats
Head cover is the most important weapon against the blaring Beijing sun (not that you can see it, with all the smog) and chief among them with the athletes was the Panama hat. In variations worn by Paraguay, the Cayman Islands, France, Colombia (an elaborately woven two-tone number), though Peru took the prize for the most enormous brim (looked like 7 inches on that white straw hat, easily) and Russia for practicality with crushable canvas bucket hats. Even Kazakhstan joined in with trilbys in pylon orange. Canada wore trim jockey caps, as did Portugal (theirs had racing stripes of national colours down the middle) and the USA was dapper, if unremarkable, in newsboy caps. If it wasn’t hats, it was creative and traditional headgear. Like Benin’s crunchy, sculptural gold lamé head wrap on one female athlete, and several men in caps. A few keen German footie players even fashioned their own chapeaux: out of soccer balls.
Volume
In Beijing’s stifling humidity (by the end of the night even Putin, lifting his arms to wave to his athletes, revealed a shirt and undershirt soaked to transparency with sweat), if you’re from Africa you just gotta be thankful for traditional costume, built to deal with the heat. Uganda stayed cool in floor-grazing white dresses (even the men), ditto Burkina Faso, Mali, Burundi and many others -even further over on the gulf, so did the sheiks of Qatar’s all-male team. p.s. Props to the zebra-stripe toga style draped dresses worn by the male Rwandan athletes.
Fans
Dignitaries and world leaders in the stands could be seen madly waving them, not from enthusiasm but for heat relief; so could the athletes. Sweden (aka Ikea Nation) went traditional with a folding paper fan painted with their flag (with matching aqua qipao tunics embroidered with yellow, a nice tribute to the host country). And perhaps inspired by countryman-gone-Chanel Kaiser Karl, the Germans, too, waved pancake fans done striped in their flag's red, gold and black. In lieu of the real thing, many athletes fanned themselves with their hats or scarves.
It Bags
Confirming the wane of the “it” handbag, few athletes sported any. But where else can a proud competitor stow camera, agua and the all-important PDA for calling home (or having cheesy, time-wasting phone-ins with the CBC's Ron Maclean and Peter Jennings)? The Brits wore navy purses with cream piping, France had slim red leather pouches and the Czech Republic slung messenger-style flap bags low across their hips (as did Team Canada), while the relentlessly cheering Chinese volunteers had holsters for their bottles of water.
But these are athletes not fashion plates, so there were a few misses:
Chile’s el bombadero tennis champ Fernando Gonzalez, wrapped in a wool poncho and flat wide brim hat, looked a bit too much like Colombia's own Juan Valdez, and the flag-bearing Kiwi rower in the traditional feather-trimmed Maori cape was a bit too Lord of the Rings, (though Peter Jackson would probably disagree). Also? Australia’s shiny ocean blue nylon degradé track jackets and matching satin caps were more devil-made-me-do-it than Prada.
And since Mr. Blackwell is indisposed, let's weigh in with our own best/worst dressed list.
Worst: Ukraine. With garish icy turquoise and yellow, and especially the horizontal-stripe knit ties, their contingent looked like circus ringmasters (or birthday party clowns), not stately athletes. Even the Swedes know that some colour combos are best left to Ikea.
Best: The French female athletes kept both cool and chic in stiff blue seersucker wrap shirts tied with red Gallic sashes, with coifs tucked under sleek navy berets. Must be Carla’s influence. Were they Dior?
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