Paris 2024: Fashion At The Olympic Games, Week One

It can be that this opening day photograph of LeBron James, the United States flagbearer leading his team Seine-side on July 26 day is the enduring shot of commanding fashion at the Paris Games, at once poised, sharp, at home, and athletically coiled within, centurions moving to the battle. We’ll be getting about a million other shots of LeBron on the court, but the Ralph Lauren designers did well with their take on the short ultra-English Oxford/Cambridge boating jackets with the snazzy trim in good ol’ USA flag colorways.

Louis Vuitton creative director and newly-adopted Parisian Pharrell Williams opted for the all-Vuitton fresh-off-the-clay of Roland Garros look, in basic black, summery, and super-athletic. The one non-Vuitton note, fashion-forward sports fans will note, are his super-spiffy gold-accented Adidas, a result of his new collaboration with that firm. Yeezy? What’s that? Was it a shoe, once?

If you think about it, all British rockers past and present should, actually, just drop all the fol-de-rol and get versions of whatever Mick Jaggger is doing at whatever moment, on stage or off. Man is a style book. Found in the shot above at the Bercy Arena by some eagle-eyed Agence France Press photographers, minus his better half and their son Devereaux, who are with him in Paris, Sir Mick is taking in the white-hot early going in the classic Olympic disciplines of the saber, épée and the foil. Resplendently casual for a day at the swordplay in a red-polka-dot shirt under a black crew-neck, topped by a cream-and-grey hoodie under a snazzy cream jacket, the man looks like he could still thrust and parry a bit himself.

Nailing the landing with the added statement of something like 10,000 Swarovski crystals embedded in her suit, Simone Biles is back and at it, and this was only her qualification on the vault on July 28. There’s everything else to come, for which the gymnastics world and the world at large will be grateful. She looks like a million bucks, and then some.

The world loves nothing more than celebrity content gods who date to global events, and there are no two cuter daters or sharper content gods than Conde Nast empress Anna Wintour and Australian auteur/opera buff Baz Luhrmann. Dressed to the nines for summer and yet braced for the opening-day downpour in that jolly, stiff-upper-lip way of the Empire, Wintour and Luhrmann effortlessly bring the breezy 1964 Mary Poppins to life. Here, they are clearly about to break into: A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, medicine go down. We’re liking Luhrmann as the latter-day bad-ass Dick Van Dyke character, arguably also capable of singing Wagner’s entire Götterdämmerung, just to bring the whole thing a little edge. His Australian accent’s far better than Van Dyke’s flailing around at a British one, too. Memo to Disney’s D-people: Time for a Dark-Side remake, baby! And remember, don’t let costume make Luhrmann take his shades off!

The unstoppable Jessica Chastain has got the colorways down. The team jacket says it all, but of course, to say it all exactly like this, first, there has to be the impeccably coiffed Jessica Chastain in the red dress, and then top that with the team jacket for the look. It’s all more complex than it might, at first, seem. Naturally, it’s the “Evening at Ralph’s” at, where else, Ralph’s. Don’t tell us that the Olympics are not, also, a global fashion event.

Wait, you mean there are actual French people left in Paris this week? It beggars belief, but apparently, that’s the case. The flag-bearer of ultra-French cinematic cool, actor Vincent Cassel, known stateside as the Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen player, as well as the man opposite Matt Damon in Jason Bourne. Opting here for a classic cream long-sleeved dress shirt, from all indications of the full-bodies Charvet cut if not actually of that brand, Cassell bears his simple out-for-a-walk nonchalance although the day, and the circumstance, are anything but simple. Married to Toulouse native and model Tina Kunakey, left, and with one daughter to date, Cassell and Kunakey reportedly split last spring. However that split works, nothing’s cooler, or more French, than getting back with your erstwhile ex for the Games in Paris.

We’ve been puzzling about what the racing-striped dachshund is about for a few days now, and the best guess so far is that it can be a sort of sporting homage to Jeff Koons, but never mind, it’s Lindsey Vonn’s cool pants and sharp jacket that matter.

Bottom line? These games are in Paris, remember? There’s a lot more fashion to come in the next couple of weeks.