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Worn to Win!
Dressing the Summer Olympic Athlete
With the world watching, what does the clothing of Olympic athletes say without having to say a word? In this live class, we will explore the historical and cultural significance of dress to the most celebrated athletic competition in the world.
Class Highlights
In this class, we will cover--or uncover-- over 2700 years of Olympic dress history starting with the remarkably bare first Olympic athletes of ancient Greece. We will decipher mythical lore from fact in our exploration of the origins of the Olympic Games in the sacred ancient city of Olympia where athletes competed naked. From there we will track the evolving significance of clothing to athletes competing in the modern Olympic Games, beginning with the Games of the I Olympiad in 1896 in Athens, Greece and ending with the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad today.
Along the way, we are going to meet some remarkable athletes who made their mark on both the world of sports and fashion. We will meet people like Native American track and field star Jim Thorpe who won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympics. This was a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that someone had stolen his running shoes before he was supposed to compete.
We will look at the role of dress to one of the most significant moments in sports history, when African American sprinter Jesse Owens won four Olympic gold medals at the 1936 Games in crushing defeats of both his German opponents, and Nazi white supremacist ideologies--all in front of Hitler himself. And he did it all wearing shoes made by two German brothers who would go on to create two of the most famous shoe brands in the world: Adidas and Puma.
We will meet Italian WW2 veteran and track and field athlete Ottavio Missoni--yes that Missoni!--who met his wife Rosaria at the Olympics before starting their globally recognized eponymous knitwear line.
And we will track the evolution of the intimate relationship between the fashion industry and the Olympics. From wearing designer fashions on and off the field to appearing on the cover of leading fashion magazines, these partnerships continue to this very day.
We will explore the significant role that dress played in African-American track athletes Tommie Smith's and Juan Carlos's famous protest on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico and look at the visually arresting debut of Lance Wyman' vibrating Op Art logotype. Inspired by motifs of the Indigenous Huichol peoples and hippie psychedelia, it is one of the most iconic Olympic designs in history and was used on everything from banners to dresses.
These are just a few of the many stories of strength, courage, resilience and power sewn into Olympic clothing history. For Olympic athletes, uniforms have meanings well beyond their functionality, many of which we will explore in this class.