One of the first stops U.S. Olympians make when they arrive in Paris is the Team USA Welcome Experience, located about a 30-minute drive from the heart of Paris. Run by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, for Olympians, it’s like Christmas.
Every athlete is fitted for their opening- and closing-ceremonies attire and receives a duffel bag stuffed with shirts, shorts, pants, and everything else they might need in the Olympic Village. Athletes enter a fitting room where stylists have laid out a full opening-ceremonies outfit, designed by Ralph Lauren, including shoes, in their closest size. The look includes a blazer, jeans, crisp striped shirt, and for the men, a tie. A stylist helps athletes with putting the uniform together, which includes teaching first-timers how to properly knot the tie. Then the process is repeated for the closing-ceremonies outfit, which features a more casual racing jacket and white jeans.
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Tailors, led by Talveer Sehmbi, head tailor for Ralph Lauren, make sure the jackets fit just right in the sleeves and shoulders and that the jeans hang perfectly. “A simple job such as a shortened sleeve can take 20 minutes, a shortened hem can take 15 minutes,” says Sehmbi. “But if something is more complicated, such as where we are sizing down, it may take at least 90 minutes. If we’re sizing down jeans, we going to take the whole jean apart and essentially recut it keeping as many components attach as we can. But we have a nice organization to be as effective as possible so everyone is working as quickly as possible.”
Sehmbi’s team of 22 tailors has been working long hours to ensure that every one of the 592 Team USA athletes is comfortable in their uniforms at opening ceremony on July 26. Not only are they fitting the opening-ceremony outfits, but they are hand-sewing individual patches depicting each athlete’s sport on the closing-ceremony jackets.
For Ashley Sessa, a first-time Olympian in field hockey, the experience “is like a dream. I don’t think I’ve ever been fitted for a jacket before; I don’t think I’ve ever really had a jacket.”
Even jeans get some bespoke attention