Ralph Lauren Olympics' Sports Clothing

It's not easy looking good when you're sweating up a storm. Just ask Olympic athletes. Not that fashion's the point. Still, it's always interesting to spot champions who manage to exhibit not just grace under pressure but style, too.

It's not enough to watch these athletes. We want to look like them. And feel, in some small way, like we're part of the team. This year we can - thanks to designers like Ralph Lauren, who've created gear for athletes in Beijing, plus versions for us weekend warriors back home. Here are some of the best.Lauren's looks

U.S. athletes hit the Beijing stadium Friday in tailored classics from Polo Ralph Lauren, an official outfitter of the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team. Fans here can join in wearing knit sweater vests, track jackets, hoodies and an array of crisp polos decorated with flag patches (USA, Great Britain, Italy), racing stripes or - our favorite - Chinese lettering (it says "Beijing"). Available in adult and children's sizes at Polo Ralph Lauren, East Hampton and Manhattan, and ralphlauren.com.

Winning looks from Polo Ralph Lauren'’s Olympic Games Collection include Deontay Wilder, of the U.S. Boxing team, in a USA 08 polo with large Team USA logo on back, $125; archery hopeful Joy Fahrenkrog, in the Blue Label Olympic Games Character polo, $125; track and field hopeful Brianna Glenn, in Blue Label Olympic Games track jacket, $145; and Giuseppe Lanzone, of U.S. Rowing, in the Olympic Games polo, $125; men'’s shorts; ribbon belts, $55. (Polo Ralph Lauren)

Fashion V Sports Exhibition

V&A is staging the Fashion V Sport exhibition this summer! Exploring the connection and association of fashion and sports will be part of this. This will show how to street style give a big part on both industry.

The exhibition will showcase around 60 outfits from leading designers. It will also illustrate how designers like Dries van Noten and Kim Jones have reworked sportswear staples such as the grey jersey tracksuit into high fashion items.

An exhibition of DARE, DISPLAY, PLAY, and DESIRE:

Dare: Technical Innovation

Function and high performance are of primary concern in the design of sportswear. Companies invest a considerable amount of time and money into researching performance-enhancing garments and footwear.

Recently, fashion designers have integrated many of these technologies into their designs, often in direct collaboration with sports corporations. At the same time, sportswear has become increasingly fashionable and self-aware, often looking back at its own design history.

Display: Individuality and Uniformity

Sportswear or sports-inspired fashion may seem a uniform mode of dress. There is nothing more ubiquitous than a pair of trainers, a hooded jersey top and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. However, individuality is expressed through subtle differences and modifications. This section explores how homemade street adaptations - such as how laces are tied and adorned, or how tracksuits are worn - have inspired designers to reinterpret trainers and the tracksuit. It also looks at how the practice of customising has motivated the production of industrially customised goods sold by major sports companies.

Play: Exaggeration and Vibrancy

Sportswear first crossed over into casual wear because it was comfortable and affordable. Since then it has increasingly acquired its own sartorial language, one that is based on patterns and colours of performance sportswear but is often playful and highly exaggerated.

In manipulating the idea of sportswear, designers have pushed the boundaries of what trainers and sports clothes can look like. Witty, ironic and sophisticated, their work reflects the equally inventive customisation of sportswear that can be seen on the street.

Desire: Obsessive Behaviour

The area where fashion and sportswear coexist most comfortably is in the advertising and consumption of menswear and sport-related products. From case studies of a designer's obsession with football, via one-off, limited edition or cult design pieces, to expensive trainer and tracksuit collections, this section pinpoints the place in which sportswear's function has become almost redundant and instead its fashionability has become the key feature.

For more information visit Fashion V Sport

USA’s Olympics Sports Clothing by Nike

As the world prepares for the challenge of the Olympics, players are for sure ready to compete and show their long and painful hard work. Working and training hard is one of the key in reaching their target, but for Nike, a well formed athlete will be performing in an edge level when geared with their latest technology in sports clothing.

Aerographics

At Nike, less is always more, and that principle led to the creation of Aerographics, an engineered mesh that can remove up to half the yarn in a garment. Typically, adding a mesh panel to a shirt means sewing in mesh and adding seams that can bunch and chafe.

Instead, Aerographics allows designers to incorporate mesh directly into a garment without any extra materials. In fact, this new technique cuts weight by reducing the amount of material, while adding comfort and passive cooling to the garment itself. With Aerographics, athletes will be cooler just by dint of wearing the garment—no small matter given the heat and humidity in Beijing in August.

Aerographics uses a unique process to remove unnecessary fibers wherever you want only mesh on a garment. But, what makes Aerographics truly special is that, for the first time Nike can make a garment cooler while adding fully functional, country specific graphics designs. This unique process opens up a new door to create functional graphics relevant and unique to each Federation.

This technology will embrace the body of the athlete of the USA team especially in basketball and track and field division.

Flywire

In addition to Team USA’s uniform design, Kobe Bryant of the basketball team will be wearing the new USA Nike Hyperdunk colorway. The Nike Hyperdunk is 18 percent lighter than the average Nike basketball shoe and is the lightest and strongest basketball shoe Nike has ever created.

Imagine a paper-thin shoe, no more than two microns thick, whose only support comes from threads. This is Flywire. A revolutionary technology, its high-strength threads work like cables on a suspension bridge with support engineered precisely where a foot needs it. Flywire allowed Nike to make its lightest and strongest footwear ever, transforming how footwear is engineered by reducing the amount of material required for the upper of a shoe to the bare minimum. Thanks to this innovation, track spikes with Flywire are now under 100g – a weight never before achieved – without compromising on durability or integrity and support.

Such a precise placement of the Flywire filaments means the uppers are more like a second skin. The fabric is only there to keep out rocks and dirt. The threads provide all the support, and the new footwear provides a solution to what had been an unsolvable problem—slippage.

Walk or run in a shoe and with each step your foot slips. Your foot pulls back maybe just a millimeter, but over the course of a race those millimeters add up. Assuming a meter stride, over 1000 meters, could potentially equal a whole meter savings at the finish line—no small amount when the difference between first and third place is less than that.

New Sports Clothing for Oregon State University

For the season 2008, Oregon State University will be wearing a new football uniform. It will be a flash back to the history and heritage of the school as Nike, the sponsor of this sports clothing, hook up a traditional football jersey design.

This jersey will be available for the fans starting on August 28 before the first game at Stanford and can be ordered in advance through the new game-day and online apparel store for Oregon State Athletics

Though classic with its design, this clothing will still use the latest technology used by Nike.

Innovative fit - the new jersey has an updated design and incorporates new performance fabrics producing a tight shrink-wrapped fit. This minimizes grab points.

Weight reduction - both the jersey and pants are significantly lighter weight. Players are carrying less weight throughout the course of a game.

Improved moisture management - both jerseys and pants are produced with fabrics that hold far less moisture, thus carrying less weight.

Increased ventilation - light weight mesh is added in areas traditionally covered by non-breathable fabrics. In the upper back neck and under arms where heat can escape (areas not covered by thick plastic & foam shoulder pads).

New Vols Road Uniform

If the specs are correct, it appears that the old-school orange pants from the days of Johnny Majors may make a big comeback for the road games this season. That’s a HUGE change seeing how the Vols haven’t worn the orange pants with the white stripes since 1992. They’ve always worn the white-on-white under Fulmer, but apparently, the buzz surrounding the orange-on-orange that UT wore in the SEC Championship Game last year was considerable enough for adidas to make some changes.

Also, noticeably absent from these specs are the black uniforms that all the youngsters/Georgia wannabes want the Vols to adopt.

The other subtle but welcome changes are as follows:

1.) The name on the back of the road jerseys will now be in orange (according to the specs) — just like the old days — rather than the black that UT has sported in the recent past.

2.) The numbers will be on the sleeves rather than the shoulders.

Again, notice the adidas logo on the bottom. These are authentic specs, and while we here at 3SIB cannot guarantee that the orange pants will ever be worn on the field, they are assuredly an option since adidas has made them.

Sports Clothing Technology by Reebok

Here’s current technology being used by Reebok to bring out quality clothing and give a mark for technological advancement in sportswear.

Kinetic Fit

Kinetic Fit System accommodates the changes in size and shape of an athlete's foot as it moves. It uses engineered stretch panels

X-Static

X-Static silver embedded fibers help regulate body temperature and a powerful antimicrobial repels odor and sweat

Play Dry

This base layer moves moisture, accelerates evaporation, increases ventilation, and reduces abrasion without trapping the body's thermal energy

Play Warm

This cover layer creates dead air space to slow the body's thermal energy loss, while helping disperse moisture initiated by the playdry base layer.

Play Shield

This outer layer's breathable linings, friction reducing fabrics, strategic venting, and ergonomic construction are superior for any weather performance.

Here's some of their sports clothing:

see here for more clothing.

Nike PreCool Vest – Sports Body Heatsink

To keep athletes cool at the world's biggest sporting event Nike has unveiled the PreCool Vest. Developed specially for the Bejing Olympics the vest has multiple triangular cavities of various sizes and inside there is frozen water. This vest is recommended to be used about an hour before the athlete competes. It should be use for the normal warm-up of the player, remove then compete thus cooling your skin and lowering your body temperature and making the athlete last 21% longer. The vest is made with two different materials, the first acts as a thermos, preventing the cold from escaping and the second helps to keep the body cool.