Olympics 2024: How Berluti Burnished Team France's Uniforms
The original Olympians didn’t wear any clothes.
In Ancient Greece, Olympia, events like racing, javelin and discus were undertaken nude to honour the god Zeus and celebrate the peak athleticism of the human form.
Back then, over 2,700 years ago, around 50,000 people travelled from across the Greek world every four years to watch the Olympics.
Today, millions do.
One of the beautiful things about the Olympics is the balance it strikes between preserving tradition and welcoming innovation.
We maintain the mythos of the torch, but it’s flown about via plane and held by athletes wearing aerodynamically engineered lycra and spandex.
At the first modern Olympic games in 1896, athletes wore private athletic club uniforms or their own clothes.
It was only at the 1908 London Olympic Games that national team uniforms were introduced, as a means to symbolise nations, strengthen community and evoke the spirit of competing teams.
Since then there has been a menagerie of bold, experimental and eye-catching uniforms at the Olympics.
These uniforms have been playful, political and poignant, helping to cement critical moments in sporting history.
Today leading fashion manufacturers like Lacoste, Stella McCartney, Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren play a vital role in designing and sponsoring such uniforms.
But what actually goes into manufacturing them?
In honour of this year's Olympics held in Paris, let's explore the Opening Ceremony uniforms of Team France.
Manufactured and designed by leading leather maker Berluti, they have a lot to say about the nation and textile sustainability.
Creating outfits fit for Olympians
Berluti is a luxury French leather maker that manufactures menswear, known for using calfskin, kangaroo leather and alligator skin in its shoes and boots.
The manufacturer makes leather belts, bags and wallets, as well as bespoke and ready-to-wear garments. Offering bespoke tailoring and specialising in premium-quality Venezia leather, Berluti creates products that stand the test of time.
Team France’s opening ceremony look, sleeveless blazers with ombre labels were created in collaboration with Carine Roitfeld, famed fashion designer and editor-in-chief of Vogue.
“She’s a friend of the house, she helped us work on this collection because Berluti, by default, is a men’s fashion house,” says Agnes Fillioux, Director of Industrialisation at Berluti.
“We worked together on the silhouette.”
Both parties quickly agreed that they wanted a highly harmonious, stylised look that incorporated the key material and design elements Berluti is renowned for.
They started with the colours of the French flag as a baseline.
Once the pieces and colours were chosen, they faced a difficult task.
How were they going to incorporate Berluti’s signature technique, burnishing?
Berluti: the burnishing experts
Burnishing is a hallmark of the Berluti brand, frequently applied to its clothing and shoes.
Burnishing is where leather edges are buffed to a slick, glossy finish.
This serves both a functional and aesthetic purpose, looking stylish and keeping moisture out from sealing the cut edge via fiction.
Berluti decided the jacket lapels of the uniform would be an ideal spot for burnishing.
To support this a unique colour was developed, through a combination of various dyes, waxes and fabrics.
Dyes and waxes were painstakingly applied to belts and other leather elements of the outfits.
“To be honest, these colours are quite difficult to achieve and it is much more complex on textile than on leather,” Filloux says.
“The difficulty is the satin reverse. So, we had to adapt and find uniformity to make it harmonious and elegant.
"The colours had to stand out, without bleeding. It was a really complicated technical challenge, but we are quite proud of the results,”
Chloé Lopes, Head of the Colourist Workshops at Berluti expands on how the burnishing was specifically achieved.
“We start with neutral leather. There is absolutely nothing on it and we add colour using the dyes,” Chloe says.
“With two dyes, red and blue, the person working on the piece adds colour layer by layer.
"Everything is done by hand to create the degraded effect, using a highly concentrated red that will gradually fade.
"And that is really in the hands of the person who is creating this effect.
“It’s really complicated because we’re starting with something that’s wet so we have to blend it enough to get a result that is perfectly homogeneous.
"If we use a cloth that is too damp we ruin the burnish.”
Style & sustainability
In addition to burnishing, Berluti had another critical consideration when it came to the Team France uniforms- sustainability.
They collaborated with deadstock fabric company Nona Source to minimise waste and repurposed materials, particularly for textile scarves and pocket handkerchiefs.
“We used existing Berluti materials to align with the notion of eco-responsibility and eco-design that we had for this collection,” explains Fillioux.
“It’s something that was mentioned in the brief from Paris 2024 but it’s also the way we have operated for several years at Berluti.
“It’s a house that collects the group’s leftover materials at the end of the season.
"So we re-purposed unused materials to make the textile accessories.”
Later today we’ll see these outfits showcased in all their glory by Team France at the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
A lot of thought, creativity and time has gone into designing, planning and manufacturing them, with Berluti alluding to France whilst adding their own unique twist.
Other standout uniforms so far have been from Team Mongolia, which has gone with a gorgeously intricate and bravely historic design.
Really, all the teams there this year are brave- I’ve heard some of them are even prepared to swim in the River Seine!
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