SA Olympic outfits panned by Ozzie fashion police!

South Africa failed at the first hurdle of the Olympics, if the assessment of two Australian fashionistas is anything to go by. They gave South Africa 2/10 and 6/10 for their uniforms at the opening ceremony in Beijing on Friday night.

The first judge felt that the South Africans fell down because
a) they looked “a bit Australian” (apparently this is a bad thing!); and
b) they committed the truly unpardonable fashion sin of wearing green Crocs.

“Unnecessary,” declared “leading Australian fashion designer” Peter Morrisey. Daniel Avakian was kinder — he liked the flag draped around the shoulders — but given that he bestowed 7/10 to Turkmenistan in their vomit-green suits, this is nothing to be proud of.

Before South Africans feel too aggrieved, however, it’s worth noting that both designers hated the Australian outfits too (the winners, in their view, were the Italians, French, Japanese and Americans). Morrisey moaned:

“Every other country looks like professional athletes, like winners. The Australians look like they’ve just come from the pool and someone has said, ‘Quick, you’ve got to be at the stadium.’ Isn’t this the most embarrassing thing? It’s so disappointing — yet again.”

Having read horror stories about the poor quality of the South African kit, I was preparing to cringe on behalf of the team. However, I was pleasantly surprised; the announcement that, at long last (it was around midnight Sydney time), South Africa were in the stadium was greeted with a cheer equal to those enjoyed by Cuba and Iraq. Flag-bearer Natalie du Toit (du Twah as the Australians pronounced her name) is one of the great stories of this Olympics, and everyone looked happy and diverse in a wholesome, smiling Canadian way.

Why the Australians felt the need to pick on the South Africans is beyond me. I saw real fashion crimes out there. Like the Spanish: red and yellow might be the colours of your flag, but, used in an outfit, they make everyone look like they work for McDonald’s when they’re not flinging javelins or swatting handballs. The Russians looked naff, and there’s clearly something happening in Eastern Europe because the worst outfits by far were those of the Hungarian women. My mother thought they resembled survivors of an explosion in a strawberry-jam factory; I thought they resembled a battalion of 1950s housewives, with their skirts and blouses and matching red handbags. It was deeply, deeply weird.

And there’s another thing. At least the South Africans looked aware that they were on show, and maintained a semblance of order as they walked. So many of the teams wandered into the stadium looking like nothing so much a school group on a tour of the more prominent historic sites of London. They proceeded casually around the space, holding video cameras aloft, taking photos, even talking on cellphones. Hello people, you have an audience of more than a billion TV viewers: have some sense of the significance of the occasion.

Again, the Spanish stood out for their lackadaisical progress around the track, accompanied by what sounded like a mariachi band. Here the Americans were far and away the most impressive team: apart from their sporty yet smart outfits (“So smart, so elegant, so Hamptons,” gushed one of the Aussie designers), they walked in an orderly queue and not one of them attempted to photograph Dubya and Mrs Bush waving at them.

Finally, the US exhibits behaviour that’s actually worth emulating.