Are you kidding me?? I first saw the brief AP mention about this via the NYT and went a-hunting. Turns out it was ABC News that discovered the Made-in-China labels. Embedding on the YouTube version of Diane Sawyer’s video has been disabled, unfortunately, so I can’t post it, but you can find it halfway down the main article page. I’d like to thank designer Nanette Lepore for expressing the outrage I’m feeling, saving you all from an outburst of all-caps here. (Go on, watch the vid! It’s great to see how they discovered where the clothes were made; it was incidental to the piece being filmed.)
I think “spineless bastards” might be the best descriptor of the U.S. Olympic Committee, given this statement:
ABC News reached out to Ralph Lauren and the U.S. Olympic Committee Wednesday and asked why American-made clothing had not been selected for the athletes. The committee responded with a statement: “The U.S. Olympic team is privately funded and we’re grateful for the support of our sponsors. We’re proud of our partnership with Ralph Lauren, an iconic American company.”
Ah, a classic non-response by people with no integrity. That is a politician-worthy evasion. While I have always found Ralph Lauren’s design sensibilities gag-inducing myself, the company is perfectly entitled to make its millions by wrapping itself up in the American flag, catering to the most upper-class tastes, and manufacturing all its clothes in China (I don’t know if it does entirely). But when it comes to outfitting the U.S. Olympic team, how could they POSSIBLY think it would be acceptable to send those jobs offshore? I would really like to see some USOC heads roll over this one– and some more detailed breakdown of the costs of using American versus foreign manufacturers. Before everyone goes assuming that Chinese manufacturing was so much cheaper:
Nanette Lepore, one of the top U.S. fashion designers, said she was shocked that none of the uniforms had been made in the states. Further, Lepore said that it was “absolutely” possible that the athletes could have been outfitted in U.S.-made clothing. She said U.S. manufactures could have easily made the uniforms — and for less.
Here’s how much the uniforms cost: [to buy, that is; no info on the production costs]
Men:
Beret – $55
Tie – $125
Belt – $85
Shirt – $425
Blazer – $795
Trousers – $295
Shoes – $165
Women:
Beret – $55
Scarf – $58
Belt – $85
Shirt – $179
Skirt – $498
Blazer – $598
Questions, questions: is that what RL made the Olympic team pay? (doesn’t exactly strike me as Made-in-China cheap, those prices.) Or did they comp the team or sell the outfits at a discount because the company is going to make its real money elsewhere? Now I’m thinking the decision to manufacture overseas was entirely RL’s because they weren’t just outfitting the Olympic team, but placing bulk orders. Because, you see those hyperlinks above for Men and Women? Go ahead, click through to see the whole hideous collection (seriously, who could wear that beret with a straight face?) that’s available on the RL site. Apparently anyone can trick themselves out in the Olympic uniform, in addition to the other Olympic tie-in merch that’s available. That seems so wrong, amongst the larger backdrop of wrongness here… It’s really reassuring to hear that Ralph Lauren is considered “an iconic American company”– so iconic that apparently it wouldn’t occur to them that a Made-in-China label on Olympic uniforms could be a public relations disaster, let alone decidely un-American. (Oh– another question not answered: this article said that RL outfitted the last Olympic team, but no mention of where those clothes were made, so I’m guessing it was in the USA. Then why the change this time?) Now that I know that Ralph Lauren is profiting off Olympicwear to anyone who wants it, I’m leaning more towards the camp that’s calling for the Olympic team’s clothing to be scrapped and remade in the USA. Heck, they just need to do a return to RL; apparently the inventory wouldn’t go to waste.
UPDATE: So, over at the Beeb, the USOC is mentioned as making the point that Team USA was privately funded and sponsored. Um… so? How does this dovetail with the fact that “The US Olympic uniforms cost $1,945 for men and $1,473 for women”? If Ralph Lauren is able to make the uniforms on the cheap in China but steeply mark up the costs for Team USA, who’s picking up the tab? Clearly there are some missing pieces of this puzzle…
Oh, lookit, here’s another: Unbelievably, it seems that the 2008 uniforms were also made in China. Did that fact fly under the radar last time because the Olympics were in China? The blogger Bob McCarty Writes said he’d emailed the U.S. Olympic Committee Public Affairs staff to find out why American tailors weren’t used and that he’d post the response… which apparently never came. His article includes a Reuters video featuring the heroic rush of Chinese laborers to produce 1,800 uniforms in ten days. I suppose the case might have been made that an American client couldn’t have managed such a tight schedule, but why was it an insanely short deadline in the first place? Not exactly a spur-of-the-moment event, the Olympics. Given what is said here about individually tailoring atheletes’ uniforms, that obviously builds more costs into the Team USA equation, but in the iEconomy Series over on the New York Times, the tech companies made a point of saying that what made overseas manufacturing so much cheaper wasn’t actually the labour costs– the biggest impact was the proximity to the electronics supply chain in the Asian market. Which makes me think that the justification for not having Olympic uniforms made in the USA (whatever it is; will we ever find out?) will be found wanting.
UPDATE 2: I’ve just been staring at the uniform costs again, and am starting to absorb a few odd details I didn’t fully appreciate last time around. For example: Men’s shirt: $425. Women’s shirt: $179. Why so big a differential?? To help offset the fact that men’s trousers only cost $295 to the women’s skirt, at $498? Now, I don’t claim to have any fashion/design expertise, but wouldn’t a skirt be a lot cheaper to make than a pair of trousers? And $200 more for a men’s than women’s blazer, why? Also, possibly the funniest thing here– while I double-checked the Beeb’s math on the uniform cost totals (and I highly resent any situation that requires me to do math), the glaring problem with the results doesn’t actually require numbers proficiency (thank god) but some good ol’ observational talent. To wit: why does the men’s uniform include shoes but the women’s doesn’t? Are the women supposed to go barefoot, pregnant or no? Or is it a BYOP (bring your own pumps) affair? Are the women expected to bear the cost of new shoes or is some other supplier in play? I’m also really hung up on a tie costing $125. Only $40 less than a pair of men’s shoes, really? Such are the questions that hound my brain. Can anyone explain these mysteries of the universe? I feel the Higgs boson is within my grasp compared to this.
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