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BEFORE THE SPORTING action begins proper, there is fashion to rank.
The uniforms of the nations competing in the Olympic Games have over the years become a significant talking point ahead of the Opening Ceremony.
Remember Tonga’s flagbearer and taekwondo competitor Pita Nikolas Taufatofua? His oiled-up look was a worldwide hit at Rio 2016, one he repeated at the winter games in Pyeongcheng two years’ later (he’s also a cross-country skier).
Fashion, at its best, is provocative and portrays a deeper meaning. A conversation starter, even if it divides opinion.
“I absolutely love the uniform, it’s so fashion forward,” was the opener from one journalist in the press room after the flagbearers – hurdler Sarah Lavin and golfer Shane Lowry – were revealed wearing the Laura Weber-designed outfit this afternoon.
“The white tracksuit that we just saw?,” exclaimed another reporter with incredulity.
Ireland’s uniform is objectively more than just a tracksuit though – it is over three years in the making, is topping the best-of lists across the world (WWD; The Independent; The Conversation; the BBC calls them epic) as we await the teams journey along the Seine, and was made in-house at one of the country’s top designer’s studio in New York.
Part of the fashion-in-sport conversation now is not only identity, but sustainability and comfort.
Weber manufactured the outfits in the Garment District of NYC from a special type of fabric called ECO-Hybrid taffeta, created using recycled T-shirts and plastic bottles.
Sport and fashion are having an intertwining moment right now, according to Weber who has been based in New York since 2013 and is seeing the plentiful collaborations happening between fashion houses and US athletes.
“America is just killing it with that,” she tells The Journal at the flagbearers’ reveal at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris.
“There are so many collaborations with sports stars – they are our new influencers. I think that the Irish athletes are the perfect example of what Ireland has to represent in terms of influencers on the world stage.”
The big business deals are also a sign of the growth of female sport across the world, a change Weber started noticing about six years ago.
“The real turn in it has taken time, but it’s about time. My god, it’s the first Olympic Games that there is equality in the number of men and women and I just think it’s so phenomenal to show up and represent Ireland in this way.”
Team Ireland athletes were given individual tailoring sessions with Weber for tonight’s look. That’s not typical for the event.
“I love to over service,” says Weber, who designed for Jill Biden ahead of her husband’s presidential inauguration in 2020. (Beyoncé is also on her client list.)
“I’m definitely a perfectionist and I love to make everyone feel their best selves,” she adds, herself dressed in an immaculate cream suit to complement her work.
“I think the only way we could do that is to ensure we tended to every athlete and fit them with what felt good – if they wanted a bigger waistband, a tighter leg, a roomier jacket, that was so important. I think that I wanted everyone to show up in the way that they felt their best selves.”
Sarah Lavin’s county badge, which adorns the sleeve of the jacket, was personalised to the extreme – featuring her favourite colour pink, something deduced by Weber through a good social media stalk.
The county badges have proved to be the most universally popular element of tonight’s uniform – although they started out as somewhat controversial.
“It was a huge conversation over eights months to really get to this point… is it really a good idea? Will they feel divided? Will it actually unite the athletes having different individual counties on their sleeves?
“But I really sold it as, ‘These athletes may not know each other, they may never get to meet up until the opening ceremony’, and so it was about getting them together and having that talking point of, ‘Let me see your patch. Let me see your county. Where are you from?’ And they get to talk about that right there and then and it’s a really lovely moment for them.”
But the deeper meaning of the feature is to offer a nod to the “families, villages and communities are the people who have shown up for these athletes every single day and have supported them to get them to this point in their career”.
Her work, which will be on show from 6.30pm (Irish time) today, is being recognised along with that of Michel and Amazonka Choigaalaa of Mongolia and Stella Jean for her work on Haiti’s kit.
Originally trained in textile design at Ireland’s National College of Art and Design, Weber dismissed the idea of green for tonight’s uniforms.
Her friend, three-time Olympian Natalia Coyle, had showed her Team Ireland’s previous uniforms while the pair worked on the modern pentathlete’s embroidered wedding dress, and she decided she needed to pitch something bold.
She believes ditching the green for “monumental white” was her most radical design choice. As this year marks Ireland’s centennial games – having first entered as a nation in 1924 – she wanted a nod to the Greeks who wore white in the ancient ceremony.
Other details include the Irish flag subtly woven into the pant piping, hand-embroidered emerald shamrock brooches on the lapels of each jacket and, of course, a pocket that fits a smartphone.
The closing ceremony outfits, also designed by Weber, have been fitted with a star strap around the neck of the jacket in the hope they will frame medals on at least some of our athletes after the next two weeks’ of competition.
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Like a big judo team! Oh well loads of golds to come let’s go
Seeing those chefs is making me hungry!
@Jack Hayes: lol, that’s exactly what I was thinking, thought they were providing the catering to the irish squad.
It’s awful, looks like a mix of a karate uniform and something out of the Salvation Army
I was hoping someone would share my thoughts.
I have not been disappointed.
Terrible.
Its nice to see cookery added as a sport. Kitchens can be dangerous places.
Why does the theme from Love Boat pop into my head?
They look like extras in a psychiatric hospital drama and I’d bet they were made in some sweat shop in the Bronks. They’re almost as hideous as Sinead’s wax head.
A great honour.well done and best of luck to all our team at the Olympics
A hood over the head and they would pass for the Klu klux Klan.
tiresome should have gone with something more traditional, nothing Irish about it. A nice tracksuit or a shirt/chinos combination would have been much better. Opportunity missed.
@Raymond Dennehy: Yes. Sino-Spanish textile and design is … “Traditional” and “Irish”.
I think I missed the part where Ireland had the opportunity, freedom and wealth-luxury to develop their own indigenous fashion over the past Millennium of British Occupation and coerced cultural and linguistic assimilation
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
However. Yes. The “4 leaf clover” and “shamrock” is not only an Americanism, but is very much worn-out Americanism at this stage.
Probably we could have done something like non-tartan or Celtic-design embroidered arisaid plaides (worn entirely differently to that of Scots) with Tara brooches with Olympic, County and/or individual symbolism.
…I see nothing wrong with the whites though. White is the anti-Sectarian “Peacemaking” segment of our National Flag. Thus it is a loud statement for Ceasefire and Peace in Palestine and Ukraine.
@Raymond Dennehy: Shirt and chinos as a missed opportunity haha. On you go down to Galvin for men, get yourself a rigout and leave the fashion to the fashionable!
@Raymond Dennehy: Australia, has gear,,next time get the Australia’s to make one
Top Chef?
Reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Homer was on charge of waste control..
Mad how a pro golfer walking with flag of an amateur comp. Mad really
@Robert Doogan: Lad, professional athletes have been allowed to compete at the Olympics since the 80s, although it’s up to each sports federation to make a final call on that. Do you think Rhasidat Adeleke is an amateur ? Her estimated net worth in 2024 is between 2-5 million dollars. And best of luck to her.. Do you want to go through the entire Irish team in terms of who’s proffesional or not .. or is it just Shane you want to have a pop at ?
@Brian: It probably would have been safer for Adeleke if nobody had ever thrown out a very AmeruKKKan “net worth” figure that absolute imbecilic Irish (read: Eastern European+German+Italian Fascists living in Ireland) Racists will interpret as Liquidity. As actual cash rich. As: “next time we see her round Tallaght, let’s beat the crap out of her and rob her Credit cards”.
@Pink Freud: LOL.. and that’s got what to do with my post exactly? .. I mentioned another Irish athlete to highlight a point about professionalism in the Olympics/Irish team.. You’re the one who’s trying to bring race into this.. I see an Irish woman.. What ever you see or want to project is your problem pal.
@Robert Doogan: Time to come into the real world. Where have you been living
@Brian: @Brian: Chill out, Brian. I think athletes should not get paid. It’s not the same as going to actual work is it? Its just like P.E class back at school, although, on a much bigger scale. It’s hardly like going to a double maths or science class. Nightmare!!
Just seen them on the six o’clock news and they look even worse and more ridiculous on television.
It is the worst I have ever seen. All I can say if that is considered fashion forward I will stay in fashion past or present. Just terrible
Let’s hope Ireland matches their uniform with Medals
Absolutely dreadful, no doubt some well connected individual collected a shedful of loot for these monstrosities!
I see nothing wrong with any component targeted in the comments. I think it’s great that she considered so much around symbolism and ethnic identity. But the Americanisms of “4 leaf clover”/”shamrock” is well worn out many years ago. Perhaps she is too long in USA, or is associating with too many plastic paddies, and is far too influenced by yankee mis-perceptions of “Irishness” and has begun losing touch with core Irish symbolism and long lost historic cultural fashions interrupted by Colonial Occupation?
Frankly. One cannot just walk up to a County Heraldrly and simply re-write it.
Doing so, erases it.
It is tantamount to a “cleansing” of the indigenous identity.
Like re-writing the tricolour by exchanging Orange for Purple, Brown for Green, and Black for White. Then lobbing a Marsupial into the centre of it for no apparent reason.
However. These are details that should be seen up close – and nobody has published them **yet** (wtaf lads!?) – and, yennow, they’re a bit of fun, a bit of leeway and “artistic licence”.
Probably, the only component I really have a beef with is the fact that the patches are….patch-y.
I *do* appreciate the artistic representation of “grasslands of Ireland” through “fringing”.
But…
They seem like an after-thought.
Like a grubby fixer-upper of a multitude of mistakes in stitching or template cutting.
They look like they weigh. Like they are rigid and heavy on the arm and irritatingly in the way of free unencumbered upper limb movement.
Or, they also sort of look like a toddler came along and smacked a dose of giant stickers on everyone and everyone is just going along with it ‘for the toddler’.
Perhaps if the patches had introduced the Green?
A bit more green.
Just enough to be distinctly Irish – from a distance…..on a boat….on the Seine
But let’s ask the Athletes what they think of it.
Because what we think, doesn’t really matter.
The Athletes are the ones wearing them.
Norway
Thought the Olympics was a sport competition, not a fascist contest.
@Ciaran O Donoghue: fashion??
I thought I was watching masterchef
Gosh, golly, gee whillikins and wow.
VERY slow news day!
“Medication time”
Give them a tea towel to put on their heads, and they would pass for the management of an Arabian airline.
They’re approaching Liverpool 1995 FA Cup FInal suit level with those things.
SHAME what a shame, no way Lowry represents the Olympic spirit, he cowarder out of Rio because mosquetoes ! He’s like his english plantation ancestors, an opportunists !
The Mongolian one… What’s the big Deel?
have your say