Sporting Threads: The Winter Olympics 2014

To my mind, the 2014 Winter Olympics have demonstrated that traditional national dress is very much alive. It has just been re-interpreted to meet the 21st century’s requirements for both sport and fashion.  

Sporting squads tend to kit themselves out in the colours of their flag or in national colour like the Dutch and Australians.  And there are the inevitable cultural references that creep in, like the Slovak, Serbian and Georgian crosses or the firebird motif in the Team Russia’s track suits. But, this year, at least two teams draped themselves in symbols, which gave a wink and a nod to their national needlework, too.  

For the Olympic opening ceremony, Team USA donned knitted red-white-and-blue sweaters, created by Ralph Loren, whose design featured a patchwork of stars and stripes, combined with the letters USA and his own Polo logo.  Have a look.

Lest the design be mistaken for a collage, the Ralph Loren website explicitly explains the visual metaphor, the connection of the team jacket to patchwork, a technique for making quilts from bits and pieces of material.  Sports men/women stitch a life together from scraps of time, integrating their private lives with training. The PR copy writer goes on to explain that, during economic hard time, like the Great Depression and right back to founding Puritan fathers, Americans have made quilts to keep them warm during cold winters. The site concludes:

No other design so beautifully demonstrates the resolve and resilience of the American people.

I chuckle in glee.   Yes, another example I can add to my post “Say it in Thread”.  Clearly the message of homey, frugal needlework hit the mark with the well-heeled. The limited edition sweater, with its allusion to thriftiness, had sold out despite a decidedly upscale $365 price tag.

Then there were those flower- patterned knickerbockers that the Norwegian men’s curling team pulled on for a training session. 

The flowered knickerbockers

 Both the pattern and the model caused a stir in the press.  This was, commentators observed,  crashing through a new fashion barrier even for a team already known for loud outfits, decorated in red-white-and-blue chevrons, jacquards, or faux Norwegian flags.  

Most of  Loudmouth’s designs– I kid you not that is the name of the company behind the Norwegian team’s clothing -- do teeter on the edge between gusto and gauche. 

By comparison, the curlers’ flowers and knickerbockers are quite tame and tasteful and very in keeping with Norway’s image.   Or so it seems to me who looks at the world through the eye of a needle. I find that the curlers’ outfits bear a striking resemblance to Norwegian bunad embroidery. And those knickerbockers are notoriously Norwegian too. 

A few years ago, I was in Trondheim on May 17, Norway’s national holiday, Constitution Day.  It seemed as though the whole population turned out to parade -- in traditional Norwegian dress. The men and boys wore jackets and knickerbockers with white knee-high stockings. The women and girls dressed in long woolen blue/black shirts decorated along the hem and sides in stylized flowers and leaves embroidered in wool.  

 

 I was startled to see even teenagers wearing this “old fashioned” Norwegian costume.  Our guide assured us that it was fashionable for very modern brides and grooms  to choose the traditional Norwegian outfit, which can be worn again and again,  over the a white wedding dress and black suit. 

Norweigian Dress   somanybookssolittletime.blogspot.com

Yes, the flowered knickerbockers are – don’t you agree- every bit as much the visual metaphor of cultural identity as the patchwork sweater.

Why haven’t I mentioned,  the skating costumes, all bangled and spangeled? Well their embroidery was more in keeping with the music and routine rather than nationality of the skater. But I would agree there was much needle art to admire there too.

So for the next 10 days, as hubby watches the Olympic sports, I will try to spot more needlework symbols in these events dominating our television screen!  He cheers and so do I, but for very a different reason.