Mongolia blows the competition out of the water for chicest Olympic threads athletes will don at the Paris Opening Ceremony.
If Best Olympic Uniform were a category in Paris, then we have a winner as early as now.
Move over, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, Lululemon and other brands designing Olympics team uniforms. A small country of 3.3 million people or one-fourth the population of Metro Manila, Mongolia is sweeping Olympic watchers off their feet with their ceremonial uniforms.
Designed by sisters Michel and Amazonka Choigaalaa, who make up the brand Michel&Amazonka (also called MichelAmazonka), the Olympic uniforms of Mongolia’s 32 athletes heading to Paris are so elegant they can very well be walked at Paris Fashion Week. Having said that, they are also deeply symbolic to the country.
According to the brand, the ceremonial uniforms feature two basic designs for male and female athletes, each one according to the individual athlete’s body specifications. The uniforms for the opening and closing parades took over three months to create, taking an “average of 20 hours across six stages to create just one set.”
A local Mongolian website reports that the uniforms “feature national and Olympic symbols, including the Nine White Banners, the Olympic torch, the emblem of the Paris Olympics, and representations of the sun, moon, and the Gua-Maral (myth deer), all intricately embroidered with golden thread.”
Michel&Amazonka also designed the Mongol athletes’ uniforms in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. That set, however, was in a darker shade of blue.
Michel&Amazonka was founded in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar in 2015 by designing sisters Michel Choigaalaa and Amazonka Choigaalaa in a 40sqm workshop, creating fashionable women’s clothes that are “distinctively Mongolian.”
In the same year, the sisters opened their first store, a mere 20sqm on the city’s main street Peace Avenue. Today, the brand works with 24 designers and owns a 621sqm factory, a 200sqm. warehouse, and operates three stores in Ulaanbaatar. They’ve also won over the internet with their Olympic designs.
Mongolia in the Olympics
Mongolian athletes have won 30 Olympic medals—two gold, 11 silver, 17 bronze—since the country first participated in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Their two gold medals come from judo and boxing, both at the 2008 Beijing Olympics; all other medals come from wrestling and judo, and one from a shooting event.
Mongolia’s first Olympic medalist, Jigjidiin Mönkhbat, won silver in freestyle wrestling at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, while its first ever gold medalist, Tuvshinbayar Naidan, won in the 100kg category of judo at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Wrestling is the country’s national sport and holds a deep cultural significance. It’s said that “when a male child is born in a family, Mongols wish him to become a wrestler.
Mongolia has competed in every Summer Games since 1964 except in the 1984 Los Angeles Games, which they boycotted along with 14 Eastern Bloc countries. The boycott was led by the Soviet Union, a retaliation to the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
In April, the Mongolian government announced they are targeting to win four to five medals this year. Thirty-two athletes qualified to compete in nine sports at the Paris Olympics with 10 in judo; eight in freestyle wrestling; three in athletics; three in shooting; two in boxing; two in cycling; two in swimming; one in archery; and one in weightlifting.
The athletes (and designers) have already won our hearts. We can’t wait to see them among the 200 countries participating in Paris—and making the Left and Right banks of the Seine their runway on opening day.
