The Olympics Opening Ceremony is also a fashion event, simply because it happens once every four years, and it’s widely covered. It matters what your country’s team wears as it marches, in front of the eyes of the whole wide world, ready to represent the nation in the ultimate competition but Olympics Opening Day Uniform of Indian Players was a disgrace for a colourful country like ours. Some countries take it seriously, like the US, who had the Ralph Lauren designing their red white and blue sailor-like ensemble and Great Britain who had Stella McCartney designing theirs. It’s a little disappointing therefore when India doesn’t shine as bright on this particular march.
The trouble that India has been having with the Opening Ceremony uniforms is not new to the 2016 Rio Olympics. Even last time, at the London Olympics 2012, Team India had issues. The problem: they chose to dress the women athletes in bright yellow sarees, which was great. But then they covered everything up with a navy blazer. Now this is an important enough issue because a few of the women athletes including Sania Mirza took to walking the parade with their blazers on their arms simply because the blazer was inconvenient, cumbersome and just plain ugly. And this did look unprofessional.
It’s a combination that doesn’t work, unless you are working with a very avant-garde style of draping a saree, or constructing a blazer that is meant to fit over six yards of fabric that’s wrapped around the body. It’s a wonderful thing that the people who dressed the Indian team chose to make the women wear saree, but the extremely conventional blazer was bad taste. And it made a comeback this year, this time over a saree that’s yellow and navy blue, so much worse than the last Olympic’s canary yellow. Even the men appeared dull, in their navy suits, minus the yellow turbans that they wore in 2012, and we missed that bright pop of colour.
These men and women have some of the best bodies in the world, being sports people, and India is a colourful country with designers that are known for spinning magic in their clothes. This appearance hence is a letdown for us, because it reflects nothing of the rich cultural heritage that we Indians are so, so proud of. It does nothing that uses the materials that the designers had – great models to dress and a colour palette that is India. The designers in charge may have wanted to go for a professional, sleek look, but it just ended up looking uncreative, in comparison with the other teams. We really hope some life gets injected to the costumes next time. We are the clothes we wear so for an event like this we really should be aiming for more impact.
