After a year of suspense, Giorgio Armani's high fashion uniforms for the Italian Olympic team will finally take the stage in tonight's opening ceremonies.
The designs, the first by a luxury fashion brand to be worn by the Italian team, are extremely minimalist, eschewing even the red and green of the Italian flag to focus on basic navy blue and white—a move that has encountered some criticism from patriotic Italians.
Olympic uniform designers traditionally find artistic ways to incorporate the colours from a country's flag into the uniforms, but Armani's navy polo, featuring one red sleeve, one green sleeve, and a flash of white on the interior of the collar, is the only piece in the 50-item collection that features all the colours of the Italian flag.
Armani has opted for an understated approach to patriotism in line with the sleek sophistication of the collection, screen printing the full lyrics to Italian's national anthem, "Il Canto degli Italiani" (The Song of the Italians), inside the opening ceremony jackets—glossy navy blue for male athletes and matte while for the female competitors—that we'll see tonight. He's also incorporated the first few lines of the anthem into the polo, stitched on the inside of the collar.
