While Stéphane Ashpool with Le Coq Sportif dresses the French teams for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we finally know what the outfit of the 45,000 volunteers, produced by Decathlon, will look like. This is a range of fifteen unisex, eco-design pieces, of which more than half were made in France (the more complex pieces were rather made in Vietnam, given the deadlines and quantities). They took more than 18 months to create, to meet several criteria: provide a high level visibility so that volunteers can be spotted from afar, even in a crowd modular depending on temperature changes and, of course, more functional possible. To ensure this, the French equipment manufacturer also had athletes, such as paracyclist Marie Patouillet, test the clothes.
Pants that open up and become shorts, a modular windbreaker, a bucket hat with colorful patterns, a fanny pack, a carry bag, socks, trainers… At the heart of this range for volunteers is a shirt that took inspiration from a piece of clothing that couldn’t be more French: the sailor top. This has been reinterpreted in a shade of turquoise and dark blue, cut randomly (to limit waste) from large rolls of recycled and recyclable polyester fabric. Entirely made in France, this shirt is already cult, as explained to to miss Jean-François Aufort, president of Fil Rouge, a French clothing company based in Marseille, which produced this t-shirt for Decathlon for the Olympic volunteers.
3 questions about the shirts made in France for the Paris 2024 Olympic volunteers
To miss. How did the collaboration with Decathlon to offer volunteers for the Paris 2024 Olympics come about?
Jean-François Aufort. I am the president of Fil Rouge, one of the workshops that made the Decathlon shirts for the volunteers of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. This is the first time we have worked together. It was Decathlon who asked us if this project could interest us and we immediately said yes.
Is it complicated to produce so many shirts in France for 45,000 volunteers?
It was an important and interesting challenge that we enjoyed tackling. We have been in existence since 2014 and have already had the opportunity to collaborate with other major equipment manufacturers such as Puma. So we know how to make sports jerseys very well, but this one was definitely superior in terms of volume. Here is four swimsuits per volunteer, so there were at least 180,000 to produce, but Decathlon ordered more just in case. We started in October and we’re not done yet. Decathlon designers carried out the prototyping and we carried out the industrial part: cutting, marking (silk-screen transfer) and assembly of the product. Our main work is to make streetwear and sportswear, so this type of clothing is our specialty.
What makes this shirt unique?
It is a fairly classic product, but one for which we have taken the utmost care. What makes it original is above all the shaded print of the stripes, cut randomly from the rolls of fabric to limit waste. Each piece is unique thanks to this shade which is never the same along the roll of fabric. This makes this piece even more unique, as well as being created for such a special occasion: the Olympics. Being a small French company behind the most striking piece of the volunteer panoply is obviously a source of pride.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
