Graceful Olympians Weather the Winter Games in Stylish Comfort

I f you were a designer of cold-weather fashions, you could hardly hope for a better showcase for your stuff than the Winter Olympics. Think of it: hundreds of international bodies in absolutely peak shape with nothing to do all day except train and compete in great-looking duds in front of a few thousand cameras.

From the ethnic outfits in the opening ceremonies to the spectacular suits on the figure skaters and ice dancers, the Winter Olympics offer a lot of fashion sense and, occasionally, nonsense.

HE: I always get a boot out of the outfits that are worn during the parade at the opening ceremonies. During the Summer Olympics, it’s easier to show off ethnicity, but at the Winter Games the Jamaican bobsled team can’t exactly slide into the stadium in Caribbean print cotton shirts and shorts.

Headgear seems to solve the problem for a lot of the teams, since just about any country you can think of has some kind of trademark head covering. The low-crowned cowboy hat the U.S. team went for this year looks sharp. And I like the parka design too: colorful and obviously Yankee, but not screamingly nationalistic.

SHE: I’ve been amazed at how style-conscious the competitors are. Even during practice sessions, Nancy Kerrigan dresses like a swan, ice-white gossamer skirt flying over white bodysuit. Tonya Harding looked pretty chic the other day in an all-black ensemble paired with the same kind of flirty skirt worn by Kerrigan.

In Wednesday night’s competition, Kerrigan took the prize in a Chanel-inspired black and white silhouette accented with pearls. She made me think of Princess Caroline of Monaco. Harding, on the other hand, looked like Alexis in her passe peekaboo glitz.

HE: I spent quite a bit of last weekend watching the Games with several friends who had plenty to say, all of it good, about the bodysuits that the speed-skaters and the skiers wore. The effect was enhanced by CBS showing old black-and-white film of skiers and speed-skaters back in the days when their outfits were bulky and monochromatic and the only adornment was the name of their country in block letters across the back.

Today, any competitors in those two sports--Alpine skiing particularly--who don’t look like they survived an explosion down at the Sherwin-Williams plant look just plain dull. Zebra stripes, spider web designs, iridescent colors washing around. Even the technical gear--the skis, poles and skates--look like they were designed by David Hockney by way of Peter Max.

Of course, you have to have a body by Michelangelo to wear any of that stuff. And the ice skaters’ outfits aren’t much more forgiving, are they?

SHE: All they take is no waistline or hips and Gable gams. Watching those svelte women skate with their partners, ballroom-dance style, made me feel like a plump Cinderella aching to go to the ball. Suddenly, I was whipping out my tape measure, measuring my waist and hips and vowing to fast until Christmas.

The Oscars has nothing on the Olympics for a parade of pure, show-biz panache. I confess I sometimes get so involved with what the competitors are wearing I forget to watch what they’re doing .

HE: I’ll admit to a great bias here, but it seemed to me that while nearly all the other ice dancers tried--and failed--to impress with costume gimmicks (the dorky pseudo juke joint outfits Gritschuk and Platov wore for their frenetic rock-and-roll routine, for instance), Torvill and Dean had class to burn. Christopher Dean in formal black and white, Jane Torvill in silver sequins and a white skirt. So elegant it was almost painful. Sartorially as well as artistically, they were royalty skating with a bunch of hormonal brats.

SHE: Which brings us back to the less-is-more axiom. Over-dressing--looking terminally cute--always distracts, diminishes. Under-dressing forces the observer to notice us, our persona, or in the case of the Olympics, our talent.

Would you go so far as to bet that a poorly outfitted skater might influence a judge’s score?

HE: Looks like a pretty bad bet. Gritschuk and Platov won the gold medal, and Torvill and Dean got hammered by the judges and got the bronze (the audience, by the by, whistled and hooted and booed when their scores were posted).

One feature of the Olympic threads that I think we can be happy about, though, is the incredibly wide palette that the designers are using. The colors of the outfits in every sport have been among the most striking I’ve seen. Not really gaudy, since we’re talking about sporting clothes, but truly arresting. Everything from Johann Olav Koss’ candy apple red bodysuit to the Swiss bobsledders’ turquoise. These are fun colors, and I think we can count on seeing them in sporting goods stores pretty quickly.

Even you, with your penchant for basic black, might want to get a little crazy.

SHE: Yeah, I can just see us out there representing the U.S.A.--you in purple tights and one of your ubiquitous aloha shirts, me in my omnipresent black pants suit. “There they are ladies and gentlemen, Mott and Conway, the skating fashion plates. Judges, close your eyes!”