While I have not caught Olympic Fever, I watched the Parade of Nations at the opening ceremony with considerable interest.  There was an outcry about the uniforms Ralph Lauren designed for the American team because they had been manufactured in China, yet none at all because they were unflattering (lumpen blue berets, white loafers with bobby socks) and heavily branded (logos on both cap and blazer).  The Brasilians, who wore fitted yellows and green separates, were the best dressed team; they gave off joy and heat.  The British, in space-age white-and-gold jackets, missed the opportunity to do something entirely unironic (Chariots of Fire white flannels) or entirely ironic (trenchcoats and Hunter boots).  Instead the Bermudans, in white dress shirts, navy jackets and red Bermuda shorts (identical to those they sported, brazenly, at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver) took both those prizes.  At the center of it all Usain Bolt, in slim yellow trousers, looked fittingly majestic carrying the Jamaican flag.

But my favorite costume was the little cap-sleeved A-line dresses the young women carrying the country signs for each team wore.  The fronts of the dresses were printed with a crowd of contemporary faces, which were meant, I think, to represent the crazy and happy diversity of city of London, the Games, and the whole wide world.  I don’t know who designed them or the signs themselves, which floated above each girl like a halo.  The get-up reminded me of the dresses Hussein Chalayan has crafted out of wood, fiberglass and Tyvek, which are less like garments than contraptions.  There’s something cerebral, innocent and eccentric about these little Olympic dresses that, for the overscaled, overblown event, was exactly right.

If you love a man or woman in a uniform, then you will love the crowds of them milling about Plaza Square in St. Petersburg, near the naval training academy (Admiralty).  Both the men and women wear dark olive jackets embellished with red trim.  The men top off the look with big, round concave hats that rise dramatically in front and frame their faces like halos.  (Their shape reminds me of the asymmetrical bowls that trendy pan-Asian restaurants serve noodles in.)  The men in the city’s police force wear similar hats, in black.  The women soldiers and officers, rather sadly, wear peaked flight-attendant-style caps that don’t do justice to their powerful roles.

After arriving in Russia I was starved to see those things that were authentically Russian, and these hats struck me so.  They’re modern, exotic, and old-school communist.  Each time I saw a man wearing one I had to stop and stare and say a silent prayer in appreciation.  It’s easy to sport a hat that’s practical (like a knit skullcap) or fashionable (like a baseball hat).  But the men wearing these sloping-bowl-hats are going out on a limb, wearing an accessory, like a bustle or heels, that isn’t absolutely necessary and that requires considerable poise.  In St. Petersbirg the men in uniform are participating hard in fashion.