Naff Britannia

The Olympic games will, despite everything, be rather fun. This is so even though they will be tediously excessive. The absurdly lavish opening ceremony, for instance, will doubtless be an embarrassment that could have been avoided by keeping it simple. Asking the band of the Grenadier Guards to play a few tunes would have sufficed and been pleasingly British, modest and elegant. It would have offered a nice contrast to the totalitarian excess of the Beijing games.

Alas, the indignity will not end there. Consider the outfits the poor British athletes will be forced to wear. Unveiled, if that’s the appropriate term, today they appear to be inspired by the corporate branding of one of those insurance companies given a new, made-up, non-name such as Aviva or whatnot. Stella McCartney is responsible for this nonsense and had this to say today:

McCartney said she came up with an “untraditionally British” design which features a contemporary take on the union flag.

She said: “Something that was very important to me was to try and use that very iconic image but to dismantle it and try to soften it, break it down and make it more fashionable in a sense.