Watching the lead-up to the 2024 Olympics, often one of the few unambiguous moments of delight, unity, good-hearted rivals and loyalty, it was hard not to think that trend has swallowed anything.
LVMH, the Paris-based company that owns most of the country’s biggest clothing companies, and which has made its founder and CEO, Bernard Arnault, one of the richest men in the world, is the prime sponsor of the game. The organization is associated with the network city, and Paris is, after all, the metropolis that invented fashion as we know it today, which is to suggest a brilliant and at times foolish, brief quest for self-reinvention.
But the presence of fashion at the games, and more specifically LVMH, quickly turned commercial, harsh, into a celebration not of craftsmanship but of brands.
The night before the Opening Ceremonies, Arnault hosted a party at his museum, Fondation Louis Vuitton, where guests such as LeBron James, Jelena Djokovic ( the wife of Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic ), Angel Reese, Naomi Osaka and many other athletes wore clothes with visible LVMH logos. Some people wore Louis Vuitton bags and unsplashy clothing. On designer goods, the public’s temperatures tend to fluctuate. It seems as though there could n’t be anything cornier than a designer bag or label at the moment because global inequality is so high and the prices of luxury brands are rising.
What excites people about clothes right now is not fashion, but style. What has made the NBA and now WNBA tunnel style so compelling is the idea that the players are creating their own looks. They may use stylists, but you know they have a relationship to what they’re wearing that is not monetary. Several WNBA players have told me they had no idea that their designers were dressing up.
Louis Vuitton, LVMH’s biggest label, designed the cases for the medals and torches, the LVMH tailoring house Berluti made the French Opening Ceremonies uniforms, jeweler Chaumet designed the medals. Sephora sponsored the torch relays, and Moet would be present for triumphant moments. There is always some branding, Ralph Lauren did the uniforms for the United States, for example, as it has for several Olympic Games now. However, this year it seems as though the sponsors have partnered with us every step of the way.
During the Opening Ceremonies, I received dozens of press blasts from brands: Lady Gaga was wearing Dior. Jessica Chastain in Ralph Lauren. Ariana Grande in Thom Browne. Roberto Coin’s Chrynthia Erivo. The volunteer medal bearers ‘ uniforms were made by LVMH! Dior by Maria Grazia Chiuri dressed some choristers!
Look, I get it: getting dressed by a fashion brand is lucrative. Most celebrities, a category that includes Olympics, are not wearing clothes simply because they like them. And yes, fashion is a national treasure in France, so the Opening Ceremonies ‘ whimsical displays of the Moulin Rouge women in pink dancing the cancan, or the exuberant ( if aesthetically tacky ) runway show were, yes, charming.
The issue, however, was not the confluence of celebrities and sports; rather, it was the widespread use of labels. During the Opening Ceremonies on Friday the masked torchbearer, in a tattered tailcoat, leaped into a room meant to be the Louis Vuitton atelier. The camera captured a joyful look as workers worked diligently on the handcrafted canvas and leather, which has a monogram on many of its handbags and accessories. It read like an awkwardly sentimental ad for something that, at least right now, feels slightly distasteful.
When the camera was cut to Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron, you could see the swimmer’s belt, which read” ALEXANDER WANG” in blaring letters, not the French swimmer Laure Manaudou.
Maybe this is how the world felt when sports stadiums with historically significant names were razed out and replaced with places like the” Smoothie King Center.”
All this creates an aura of crassness where there should be joy, ideally beauty, and even a touch of sentimentality.
This is what caused the appearance of athletes in their native attire this year to be unusually moving. As a source of national pride, there are always teams that choose to wear clothing that has a traditional tie to their nation.
However, in a city that views clothing as its native tongue, and that frequently has a sense of superiority about its sartorial creations, seeing Ghanaians in their blue stripes and hats, Indians in their rich pastel prints, and Haitians in their textured pants and skirts was a powerful reminder that many people around the world have something interesting to say about clothing.
Particularly noteworthy were uniforms that updated traditional clothing, which updated their nation’s history into the present. Mongolia’s deep cornflower blue and red tunics, designed by the fashion label Michel & Amazonka, were based on the deel, a wrapped overcoat often worn by herders, and decorated with Olympic and Mongolian imagery.
Liberia’s ensembles were made for the second Summer Olympics in a row by Liberian American designer Telfar Clemens, whose tote bag, nicknamed the” Bushwick Birkin”, is the viral and affordable it-bag beloved by Gen Z and millennials. This was a country from which a designer fled to escape civil war, and he is now accepting his off-piste genius as one of their native sons rather than revert to their past. This is how clothing creates meaning.
Because, of course clothing is not only fashion. A valiant tribute to French tradition was the joy of those pink-clad cancan dancers or Lady Gaga’s ostrich feather and Dior feather hat sway.
But fashion can also be conservative, closed-off. It can be pointlessly snobby, too attached to tradition and authority figures. Most of all, it has a long history of being excluded, even when it borrows from other cultures that it despises.
The best of the Olympics, a celebration of the truth that style and self-expression are frequently the richest stories, was to see people from all over the world in their full expressive flower — even just a hat or scarf with a colorful blazer.