Regional costume is vanishing from the planet, kept alive at the opening ceremony of each new Olympics and on the it’s-a-small-world ride at Disneyland. Increasingly it is a small world in style terms, one in which traditional garments like saris, dhotis, lungis, kimonos and sarongs are on their way out, jeans having become as inevitable a uniform of daily life in Delhi or Dublin as in Dubuque.
With rare exceptions (the hand-knit Bad Christmas sweaters devised by Polo Ralph Lauren for the United States team, and already selling on eBay for thousands; the knit logo caps like those worn by the Canadians that left no doubt about national affiliation; the traditional Bermuda shorts on a one-member Bermuda team), the current Olympics are a perfect reflection of style homogenization. Without the curious space-maidens, in their go-go boots, spatula headdresses and carrying rings-of-Saturn signs identifying the national teams, a viewer last week would have had little luck differentiating one country from the next.
Culture Magazine
And it's showing up in Olympic dress:
