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U.S. Gears Up for Fashion OlympicsItaly and fashion go together. So do athletes and high- performance gear.
What does that mean for team uniforms at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy?
It means sleeker and more subtle styles than the fleece pieces that dominated the U.S. team wardrobe at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.
Roots, the company making many of the outfits, calls the overall look "retro futurism."
The uniforms aim to blend high-technology fabrics while using the uniforms of the 1956 Games in Cortina, Italy, as inspiration, explains Roots co-founder Michael Budman.
The outfits for the opening and closing parades include an Alpine-style knit navy sweater with a nylon front panel in white with swaths of two lighter shades of blue and a small Olympic logo patch on one side. The zipper trim is red.
"White is very popular in Italy and the U.S. wore it in '56," Budman says. (For the U.S., the 1956 Olympics were most notable because it was the first time it dominated the figure skating.)
The parade pant is nylon and the style is supposed to be a mix of a formal dress style and a snowboard pant.
Kelly Rae, fashion and grooming director at Stuff magazine, says snowboarders are among the most fickle when it comes to fashion.
"Once they're in the circuit, they're chasing snow around the world - in Europe, in Japan.
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6/1/2006 | Viewed 27,163 time(s)
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