There’s been a scandal about pictures taken of Prince Harry playing polo which were blown up and used by polo and sportswear brand Hackett as part of an advertising campaign. The posters of the Prince were fifteen feet tall and were displayed at the Soto Grande Polo tournament in Spain.

The Hackett brand is a sponsor of the polo tournament, but the posters didn’t mention this, seeming instead to imply that Prince Harry was endorsing the brand’s clothing line. There’s no information yet as to whether Hackett intends to use the picture which shows a moody looking Harry, hands on hips, in a dramatically lit moment, in magazine or billboard advertising.

The Palace has made a strongly worded statement saying that posing for snaps with a sponsor is one thing but ending up ‘on a socking great advert’ is something else. Harry’s Clarence House office also confirmed that the Prince has not been consulted about the use of the image and would not have given his consent.

Prince Harry courtesy of Hackett blog 

The hutongs (alleys to you and me) of Beijing have a new police force – of sorts.  They are called ‘Public Security Volunteers’ and there are more than 400,000 of them – arranged into neighbourhood groups that are serving the Olympic security forces which include a mixture of police, over 100,000 ‘counter-terror troops’ and more than 300,000 CCTV cameras. The PSVs patrol litter-dropping, inappropriate clothing and spitting in the street – but by the locals, not the expected foreign visitors!  Despite the attempt to distinguish the new PSVs from the old ‘neighbourhood committee’ by giving the new volunteers a snazzy red and white striped polo-shirt to wear when ‘on duty’, there’s a lot of concern in the populace – the former committees were a mixture of spies and party members who reported on the irregular activities of their neighbours, and caused many a midnight arrest or disappearance for ‘re-education’.    

The PSV polo-shirts are a big sign of changing China – they are sponsored by the Yanjing beer company, which would have been unthinkable a decade ago, and while every volunteer has been given one, less than half actually wear them. The other half have been put on the black market, still in their original wrappings, as part of the

Beijing Olympic memorabilia business. That too, would have been impossible (or an arrestable offence!) a few years ago.  The concern that the new volunteers have caused can be directly related to their entrepreneurial flair. Those who have flogged their polo-shirts still need to distinguish themselves from ordinary citizens … so they’ve dug out Cultural Revolution-era red armbands to wear, and those armbands remind nervous Beijingers of the knock on the door in the middle of the night …

Beijing street cleaners in new uniforms

This is the question that www.nosymbolrequired.co.uk asked. 

And the answer? 

Well, it was http://www.saftag.com which was given an overall rating of 5 stars, another 5 stars for item quality, 4 stars for item value and 5 stars for item fit and sizing.

Mark Wallace, who conducted the review said,  ‘I have had difficulty in the past sourcing good enough organic cotton t-shirts which will hold the reputation of my company. I used anvil organic tees for a while, which were in the correct price range, however they didn’t stand the test of time. SAF t-shirts are good quality, are not prone to misshaping after washing, and are easy to print on. The feel of the fabric is far superior to any other organic cotton tee I have managed to get my hands on. The sizes are acceptable and what you would expect. The colours are vibrant and also last well when washing.

His only quibble?

He wants to know when SAF will be bringing out a yellow tee!

 White organic T-shirt courtesy of SAF

Canadian politicians are fuming – they’ve discovered that Canada’s Olympic uniforms are being made in China!  But Tu Ly, one of the designers who created them, is unapologetic about the situation.  In an interview he made a robust defence of the decision to manufacture in China, ‘I would like to challenge these politicians to give up their cell phones made in China or their TVs, then maybe they’d really be on an even plane,’ he said. Ly added that his company has a code of vendor conduct to ensure its suppliers operate under fair working law and respect the environment.

But New Democrat MP Paul Dewar isn’t happy. ‘This is our Olympic team. We should be ensuring that all of our Olympic athletes are … wearing Canadian-made textiles and all of their uniforms should be made in Canada.’ The decision has sparked such controversy because the Canadian clothing manufacture market is in something of a decline at present.

The Hudson Bay Company, for whom Ly works, said that Asia is the only readily-available source for the specialist fabrics featured in the eco-friendly designs, which are specifically mandated to help athletes cope with Beijing’s heat and humidity. These innovative fabrics include bamboo, cocona and organic cotton. But the line of Olympic Supporters apparel is being made in China too, and that may be a more difficult case to fight, as souvenir buyers probably won’t be travelling to China!

For the last summer Olympics, Roots Canada made the athletes’ uniforms at home and outfitted Canada’s Olympic teams for every Olympics from 1998 to 2004.

Canadian Olympic team modelling their uniforms courtesy of JP Moculski, The Canadian Press

Well, to start with, sportswear should not be designed by a committee! But after the last Olympics, when a fuss was kicked up about the Kiwi Olympic team being kitted out by a non-NZ manufacturer, this time around things have changed – but has it been for the better? The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) and clothing consortium DesignTex got together in a partnership to produce uniforms for the opening ceremony as well as non-competition wear. The uniform, designed by this hybrid company, which is called Kapinua, includes a track suit, short and long sleeved T-shirts, casual shorts, polo shirts, a blazer with either trousers or a skirt, sports tops, cap and sports socks … and Crocs! Yes, black, clog-like footwear will feature in the NZ team suitcases. So they are going to look like those wallies one sees scuffing their way along the High Street with their little bags of Sunday morning recycling, aren’t they?

But it does get worse. While their T-shirts and polo shirts are made from high-performance micro-fibre, which is designed to manage moisture, and New Zealand merino wool has been used in some garments, they made the classic mistake of including three Chinese characters on the clothing which, they say, mean New Zealand. Do they really? Does nobody learn anything from experience? Didn’t David Beckham once have a tattoo that he thought said Victoria in Hindi but actually reads Vichtoria? And I wonder what the ‘three characters’ actually say – possibly it reads ‘they didn’t pay me enough to translate this properly’!

Sportswear should be designed by sports designers, not committees, and while NZ should be applauded by wanting to make their clothing at home, they may regret not having hired a top class designer to give their team some confidence.

Kapinua polo-shirt courtesy of Kapinua

Auctions come and auctions go, but this auction featured a polo shirt that has taken its former owner to the stars. Bidding for the pink polo shirt once owned by NASA astronaut Eileen Collins opened on 1 April at just $10. A week later and more than a day before its auction was set to close, collectors had pushed its price up to $300 and the final winning bid was $520.

“I can’t say it was easy for me to donate such an important part of my past,” Collins said.  She wore the shirt while training for her four space shuttle missions and her career was a glittering one indeed. In 1995 she was the first female U.S. astronaut to pilot a spacecraft and just four years later, she was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission. Most recently, and humblingly, it was Collins who led the shuttle fleet’s 2005 return to flight after the loss of Columbia and its crew in 2003.

This shirt was important to her because Collins has only a few mementos from her time in space. “Astronauts can keep very little. [I have] only the personal items, such as my wedding ring, old toothbrushes, and some shirts!” she said. She donated the shirt, which is embroidered with her name and her astronaut class’ nickname, “The Hairballs,” on its front to be part of an annual auction run by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF). Founded by the Mercury astronauts in 1984, the ASF supports college students who are excelling in their pursuit of science and engineering degrees to give them the best chance of doing what Collins did – saying The Sky’s The Limit. 

Polo-shirt image courtesy of austronaut scholarship foundation

The must-have souvenirs in Washington this week include I love the pope bumper stickers, Property of Benedict XVI T-shirts and mugs emblazoned with the pope’s heavenward gaze, all being snapped up by Roman Catholics who visited the capital ahead of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit. Many hoped that Benedict would bless rosaries and other religious articles at Thursday’s Mass. Merchandise licensed by the archdioceses of Washington and New York will be for sale at Masses and other events and online – some of the proceeds will go to help pay for the pope’s visit, but archdiocese officials say they are not expecting a huge sum. The most popular items from internet sales have been holy cards and polo shirts, which feature Benedict’s personal crest as an archbishop. Also selling well are the Benedict tour T-shirts, listing all the U.S. sites he is visiting, as if it was a concert tour.

And George? Well he’s been the victim of a scam that was nipped in the bud. A pair of Milanese forgers have just been charged with trying to sell a men’s fashion and accessories collection branded as Exclusively GC and designed by George Clooney. While the first response was that this was an April Fool’s Day hoax, police in Milan later found watches and garments that would have gone on sale if the scam hadn’t been stopped. Clooney told reporters in Rome, ‘If someone tries to sell you clothes or watches that are based on me, don’t buy them.’

Pope Benedict courtesy of Beyond Forgetting

Next time you see people wearing polo shirts, check to see if the logo has one or two horsemen. There’s a big legal dispute going on in the USA over precisely this, because US Polo Association’s logo is similar to the one made famous by Ralph Lauren because, as they say, they are the main organisation for the sport of polo in the United States and it seems a little odd for them not to be able to depict the sport on their own clothing. Now it seems that Ralph Lauren may be about to lose the battle to stop the US Polo Association using two horseman striking the ball in their logo. The association also has USPA underneath their two polo players logo on their clothing but Ralph Lauren feels that this infringes their logo and the Polo Association’s polo shirts may be mistaken for Polo Ralph Lauren and is trying to get the logo banned. The battle between Ralph Lauren and the Polo Association has been going on since the 1980s and although it now appears that courts may be willing to uphold the USPA’s right to continue with their logo.
Polo courtesy of Paul Keleher

It’s not just our sporting heroes who are struggling – the polo shirts and rugby shirt worlds are reeling today. Hot on the heels of the dropping of Johnny Wilkinson from the England team came the news that Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison,  his co-bowler had been dropped as bowlers for the forthcoming cricket match! Woe, oh woe! For those who make their living from the production and sale of sporting shirts and memorabilia, this is a double whammy. Wilkinson shirts, in all their forms and sizes, sell more than all the rest of the England Rugby squad put together, and while cricket sports tops are not sold in anything like the numbers of their rugby and football counterparts, the dropping of two experienced bowlers in favour of two relative unknowns has meant that many retailers have been scratching their heads, having no shirts printed up with the names of the replacements.  The only good news, possibly, is that while the second day’s racing at Cheltenham was cancelled due to strong winds making the tented village unsafe for spectators, there are almost no promotional horse-racing garments, so nobody is going to be losing a fortune – except the bookies!
Rugby courtesy of bombdog

To overcome Vista’s somewhat negative public perception issues, Microsoft Australia has put together an online Fact or Fiction quiz about Windows Vista. Everyone who enters gets a certificate of completion and, if you are an OEM system builder, you get Windows Vista Advisor polo-shirts too. The catch here? You may have to move to Australia and become an OEM system builder to qualify ….

Crew make embroidered linen T-shirts for women as well as polo shirts and short sleeved rugby shirts – they came into being in 1993, selling yachting kit to the rich, famous, deck-shoe wearing hordes who arrive on the Isle of Wight every Cowes week. To get your free polo shirts, all you have to do is join the England polo team, because Crew are the team sponsor. Where’s the catch? Well buying a couple of ponies and having enough airfare to fly around the world to play, right?

The Greg Norman Collection, which features golf shirts, polo shirts and other top of the line golfing apparel is sponsoring Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club Golf League. The first two hundred league members to enter a score in the 2008 competition ‘won’ GNC items while this year’s finalists will receive shirts from GNC’s Spring/Summer range. The league is open to all European and US based Virgin Atlantic Flying Club members and the season highlight will be a competition at St Regis Monarch Beach, California, in September. Now that actually might be something that many of us can attain to! So for more info, visit: www.flyingclubgolfleague.com.

Greg Norman image courtesy of DanPerry.com