Paul McCartney’s daughter isn’t getting a medal for Britain’s Olympic outfits
There’s only so much a designer can do with the official outfits athletes wear at the Olympics, but Stella McCartney may have outdone herself with her duds for Britain’s competitors in this summer’s Rio Games. And, as with most Olympic designs, hers are meeting with mixed results.
McCartney, the daughter of former Beatle Paul McCartney, combined the colors red, white and blue with a coat-of-arms motif and a gigantic “G” and “B,” with the idea behind the clothing (besides sales for adidas) being team unity and a quickly identifiable image.
“Besides standing out from the crowd, Team GB needs to look cohesive together. There are so many different personalities, all these completely different sports and schedules,” rugby player Tom Mitchell told The Guardian, “and the kit is important because it unites us as a team. When you’re walking around the village, it creates that immediate link.”
Vogue’s Luke Leitch explained what McCartney was striving for.
“For Team GB, McCartney turned to heraldry: a newly commissioned coat of arms featuring the symbols of the four nations of Great Britain is designed to stir patriotism,” Leitch said. “Sometimes cut, blown up, cropped, or rendered in silhouette or block color, the motif is used on nearly all of the hundreds of different event-specific pieces of apparel in a variety of different ways. Contrasting with the flowery hither-and-thither of the coat of arms, McCartney has opted for a blocky, basic, unfussy font. ‘The goal for Rio 2016 was to rewrite the rules of performance and design for the athletes, allowing them to look and feel like champions on and off the field.'”
By: Cindy Boren
Source: The Washington Post
