Stylish athletes to make the Tokyo Olympics the most fashionable | Mode

Euro 2020 and Wimbledon may be over but summer 2021 sport and style continues. Next up is the Olympics, which kick off on July 23 and promise to be more glamorous and fashionable than ever.

Thanks to a combination of highly stylish athletes and a new roster of designers working with the Olympic team, Olympic athletes who are on fashion insider’s radar include US gymnast Simone Biles, Bahamas sprinter Shaunae Miller-Uibo and British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith.

Biles appeared on the cover of fashion magazine The Gentlewoman in 2017, and on WSJ magazine this month. He will also design a capsule collection for Athleta, Gap’s sportswear brand.

Miller-Uibo stands out on the starting block with pink or green hair, and her Instagram feed features as many dresses as a sports bra. Asher-Smith, meanwhile, came to Tokyo from the back of an eight-page fashion shoot at British Vogue, where she wore sequins, heels, and lipgloss. The cover of the magazine called the fashion shoot making love to Dina Asher-Smith.

If fashion designers have often created the clothes worn by the Olympians, this year the fashion designers have become fashion names. Telfar, the brand that created the most fashionable bags of 2021, is working on the outfits of the Liberia team. Liberian-American designer Telfar Clemens and his team created 70 unisex outfits in four months, despite having never made a show outfit before. Team USA, meanwhile, has the power of Kim Kardashian. Her shapewear brand, Skims, will provide underwear and casual wear for all female athletes throughout the Olympics and Paralympics.

Felicia Pennant is the founder of the Season zine, which covers both sports and fashion. He said it demonstrated a shift from the Olympics being seen as a performance-based space, and stressed that the power of Telfar collaboration on such a global stage goes beyond sport. It’s cool for black people in the diaspora to go back to their roots and use sportswear to capitalize on that and express a side of their heritage in a way they’ve never done before, he said.

The alliance’s publicity is significant. In an interview with the New York Times, Telfar compared the Olympics to a fashion show, but a show that everyone can see, while Pennant said Kardashian’s work with the ever-successful Team USA will no doubt make her designs even more popular: They are winners and you want [wear] winning item too.

Team GB’s opening ceremony outfit will be designed by Ben Sherman. Inspired by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the brand’s Mod legacy, creative director Mark Williams has taken athletes out of sportswear and sported civilian Harrington jackets and button-down shirts. Striking a balance between making a statement and having the ability to wear your look again was one of the most important points we agreed on from the start, he said.

The design was showcased last month with a photo shoot featuring diver Jack Laugher and sprinter Asha Philip, taken by fashion photographer Rankin. They feel very sharp and love the secret inspirational message hidden in the layers of jackets and clothing, says Williams.