Olympic Outfits: Roots must hate us

Tomorrow night, the pride of America will march into the Olympic Plaza in Torino wearing their heads held high. Think for one second of the combined practice time put in by all of our two-hundred and fifteen athletes. Think of the thousands of hours of agony and suffering they went through to get where they are. The respect such a group commands by its mere presence is amazing. Well – unless you negate it all by making them wear strange clothes by Roots.

They call this “Retro Futuristic.” To me it looks like 1980′s trash. It reminds me of the moon boots I wore when I was six.

Roots has no style.
One major problem with Roots is their lack of style. They decided to go with a “Retro Futuristic” look this year. Take a look at the vest I linked to. Does that look hip to you? Maybe if you found something that looked like that at Goodwill with only a few inexplicable stains on it, it would be okay to wear – in the unemployment line. The style smacks of late 1970′s early 1980′s. In winterwear – 1970′s retro is certainly not the fashion.

Roots wants us to look like we have misshapen heads.
The design of the “berret” for this year is a sin against humanity. I saw a newscaster wearing one this morning and I wondered what had grown on her head. The “berrets” flare up and out – making it look like you are hiding a small bag of dried beans on top of your head.

Take a look at this image of Apolo Ohno to the right. This image does not show the head-distortion as much as others I have seen – but even here it looks like he has a massive wad of dreadlocks hiding under that hat.

Roots likes their “Logo” too much.
The biggest problem I have with Roots is their insistence on slapping their Logo on everything. The second biggest problem I have with themis that their “Logo” is nothing more than the word “Roots” written in the1970′s font-favorite”Cooper Black.” It’s one thing to see a logo on a jacket when it is a swoosh,or three stripes – that’s normal branding and I can accept that.When I see the word “Roots” on a jacket I wonder what message it is trying to send.

I was not around durring the 2002 Olympics (I was in Las Vegas), but when I got back, I wondered why the theme of the Olympics was “Roots.” It was everywhere I looked. It sounded like a stupid theme for an Olympic games to me, but once I figured out it was a company I was really confused. Why did we let them get away with making their name so prominent?

Roots makes their Logo too big
On the vest above, the area taken up by the logo is gigantic.Compare the size of the word “Roots” to the size of the word “USA” over the olympic logo. If you compare area alone – the Roots logo takse up 4.75 times more area than the word “USA.”

Roots must hate us.
There are two options. Roots either has very bad designers, or they hate us. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk these designs up to some kind of strange hatred.

Please, someone other than Roots step up next Olympics.
I hope a company other than Roots steps up next Olympics. Maybe an American company – like Nike, or Oakley, or Black Diamond (the Utah one, not the Vermont one). Just please – no more Roots. This time, we have the stupid beanies. In the future, this is what we have to look forward to (image stolen from Roots R&D lab)