More Designer Olympic Uniforms: Stella McCartney, Giorgio Armani & Prada

Hello-Hello, welcome to a new week, we apologize for being so tardy posting, the weekend’s activities somehow left us running behind.

We share just a few Bits & Bytes today, beginning with an update on what some teams are wearing for the upcoming  Summer Olympics as the games draw closer. While we have previously shown the Team USA uniforms from Polo Ralph Lauren (below, the closing ceremony styles, more in this post), designer duds for several other teams have also been created.

Courtesy Images

Giorgio Armani’s designs for Team Italy were unveiled yesterday.

Associated Press via Yahoo

The collection has actually been created as part of the company’s collaborative line with Reebok, EA7. More on yesterday’s unveiling from WWD’s story:

For the occasion, 15 Italian athletes from different disciplines joined the designer to show the Olympic kit consisting of white and midnight blue pieces, including a tracksuit with an asymmetric closure, a nylon jacket, shorts, T-shirts, sweatshirts, running shoes and suitcases.

Below we see a jacket and topic in the deep navy.

Courtesy Photos

One of the more interesting elements of the Armani styles involves the lyrics for Italy’s national anthem, back to the Women’s Wear Daily piece:

To celebrate Italy, the national anthem is written in gold inside jackets and sweatshirts, and its first verse appears on a blue band under the collar of polo shirts, while a national-flag-inspired polo features one sleeve in red and the other in green.

Associated press via Washington Post

Not all Italian athletes are wearing Armani for the Games, Prada is outfitting the Olympic and Paralympic Sailing Teams, below we see sketches of those uniforms.

Courtesy Prada via StyleSight

Australia is wearing Adidas for competition.

Courtesy Photo via London 2012

Here Australian athletes model the more formal look we will see at the Opening Ceremonies.

London 2012

Team Great Britain’s uniforms are by Stella McCartney, who has worked with Adidas for years now.

Courtesy Photo

The styles were not positively received by everyone in the UK, a snippet from this Daily Mail story explains:

Stella McCartney has defended her choice to feature a blue Union flag on the official Team GB kit for the 2012 Olympics after it was met with public outrage.

Produced by Stella McCartney for Adidas, the range, modelled by various athletes including Jessica Ennis, has been themed around a blue and white flag – effectively eliminating the St George and St Patrick crosses from the design.

More looks.

Courtesy Images

Some pieces from the Team GB collection are available online.

Our final tidbit in this topic, Vogue is doing something unusual with its June issue.

Vogue

Those are Olympic hopefuls Hope Solo (soccer), Ryan Lochte (swimming) and Serena Williams (tennis). The image is unusual because Vogue rarely puts men on its cover, let alone those not fully clothed.  There are stunning images in the pictorial shot by Annie Leibovitz, below we see model Karlie Kloss with gymnast Jonathan Horton.

Annie Leibovitz for Vogue

Click here to see Vogue’s online slide show.

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Our other item today comes courtesy of the lovely Condiments on a City Life, who was kind enough to bestow upon me the Versatile Blogger award. Below we share the rules affiliated with the honor.

1. Link back to the blog that gave them the award (this one was quite easy)
2. List seven things about themselves (a little more challenging, but seven’s not that big a number)
3. Give the award to five others

So now it is time to come up with 7 things, hmmmm. Here we go:

1. I am a closet Jello-O mold making freak. There are more Jello-O cookbooks recipe books (because one really doesn’t cook the unknown substance, we do not call them cookbooks) on hand than you can shake a stick at.

2. I spend more time doing this than I care to admit.

Scrabble

3. To compound things, I recently started playing this with TQM. She wins 90% of the time.

Words with Friends via App Reviews

4. My favorite volunteer obligation right now is manning the gift shop at a local nursing home every other week.

5. The book I am finishing right now is overdue at the library.

Open Library

6. As of a month ago we gave up on the local daily, this is now the only paper delivered to the Prepatorium.

Wall Street Journal

7. This will be the 1023rd Princess blog post.

It has been years since I have done one of these, once again, many thanks to Hayley at Condiments on a City Life for including us in her list. We’ll share this with the Pink and Green Prep, Preppy Girl Meets World, The Preppy Postgrad, and two of the very first blogs I ever followed (these go way, way back!), Pink Cupcakes and TaB, and the Preppy Pink Crocodile. (Recognizing many of us have done these quite a few times, no one should feel obligated to complete this one, I merely want you to know how much I love reading you!)

G’bye until next time!

Thank you

Anya Hindmarch Target Collection Early Release, Just Not at Target

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Does the greeting card below remind you of anyone who calls you? We thought it might. It seemed appropriate to attempt humor again this afternoon, just in case the market craters again. The Princess is beginning to think she should start contacting friends, if only to leave messages on voice mail asking, “It’s 5pm…do you know where your trust fund is?”

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Here in the corner condo at InterGalactic Headquarters for the Preppy Princess we are thinking that if financials start to augur in right before our eyes we may need to change channels. It is unlikely The Princess Consort is going to be desirous of talking us off the ledge again.

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We do find the following story from The Hill interesting, although it would have been wise for editors to think through this particular title for the article:

House limits constituent e-mails to prevent crash

When we saw the title by itself we actually thought to ourselves “How can limiting email to the House of Representatives possibly prevent a crash on Wall Street?”  At any rate, the story explains the following:

“The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill.

As a result, some constituents may get a ‘try back at a later time’ response if they use the House website to e-mail their lawmakers about the bill defeated in the House on Monday in a 205-228 vote.”

We feel validated; yesterday afternoon we thought our online activity was markedly slower than normal, and here in the office we are fortunate enough to have a T1 line. It didn’t make sense, but then, neither did most of yesterday.

One suggestion: do not even think about using email to contact your elected Representative in our nation’s capitol unless you enjoy the exploding brains experience. (Yes, it is quite tacky to have used such a expression but we are at a loss. No pun intended.)  We attempted to get to the main “Email Your Representative” page several times so as to better share the experience with you; not a bright idea.  Each and every time it froze our browser (using either Safari or Firefox on an iMac) and ultimately shut down the browser.

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We are hopeful the much-too-kind Europa Fox won’t deem this post inappropriate for a recipient of the Smile Award…especially when leading into discussion of such a fun topic!

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She is just too wonderful, bestowing upon us a SMILE award. You know Europa Fox, international style star and truly our eyes and ears on the other side of the pond.  More importantly, a wonderful mother to the completely adorable Caspar. In fact, when Caspar is of age in another 19 years or so The Princess Consort knows he is being replaced. It is simply understood. Now here are the rules for spreading the smiles to fellow bloggers:

• Must display a cheerful attitude.
• Must love one another.
• Must make mistakes.
• Must learn from others.
• Must be a positive contributor to blog world.
• Must love life.
• Must love kids.

Rules when receiving the award:

• The recipient must link back the the award’s creator
• You must post these rules if you receive the award.
• You must chose 5 people to receive the award after receiving it yourself
• You must fit the characteristics of the recipient of the award, as posted.
• You must post the characteristics of a recipient.
• You must create a post sharing your win with others.
• You must thank your giver.

So now that it is our turn to share the Award with others, here we go :

• Preppy Pink Crocodile is a daily read for her fun and fabulous posts, not to mention the recipes, oh yes indeedy, those recipes!
• Mom x 2: Exquisite taste and lots of fun, this is another must-read, and her recipes are also a smash hit here at the Prepatorium.
• Preppy Lizard: Liz exudes elegance while remaining down to earth, a combo we find extremely hard to find. She also has extraordinary taste and has done Interior Design as a pro; the woman is a genius at this.
• Fashion Herald: You could almost say the Herald shops for a living. And she has friends with names like ChristmasTime.
• Tickled Pink & Green: A witty writer, Miss TP&G demonstrates her good taste day in and day out, and she can also write. Goodness, can this woman write!

Thank you Miss Fox!

Some readers may remember our post back in June about some of Target’s designer collaborations, part of their GO International initiative. New collections that launch next week (Sunday, October 12th) are handbags from Anya Hindmarch and shoes from Sigerson Morrison. However, visitors to the Hindmarch site can purchase the bags now.

Anya Hindmarch Target Look Nine

Abve we show the Look Nine bag in navy and black. Below, Ms. Hindmarch’s Look Five for Target, already out of stock on her site.

For those not familiar with Ms. Hindmarch, she is best known for her “I am not a plastic bag” environmentally friendly tote, but she has designed handbags since the 90’s.

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We leave you with one more greeting card image from someecards, an online greeting card company. It is also a financially friendly site (our newest moniker for these trying times), as all of their cards are free.

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The Preppy Pink Crocodiles and the Cloister. Honest. (Not to mention the Poodle.)

Rarely do we see things that just stop us dead in our tracks. Probably too old or jaded or tired or something, but we generally just don’t stand back (or sit back) and go: Hunh? OMG – look at that! However, (isn’t there always a ‘however’ with me these days…?!) we were stopped dead when we saw the following online. I can’t imagine what the reaction would be in person, certainly some sort of bodily harm inflicted on unsuspecting passers-by unaware of our feelings regarding a color we refer to as “Preppy Pink.” And we do feel the need to issue an immediate alert to the Original Preppy Pink Crocodile; as outrageous as these big guys are, our own gal’s style far transcends theirs.

Believe it or not, all of this is at the Cloister of Bramante, named after a 15th Century Roman architect who worked on, among other things, St. Peter’s Basilica. Today the Basilica is home to an art gallery; the crocodiles and poodle were part of an art show at that site. (I am most definitely not fabricating either the story, or the photos; I couldn’t make this stuff up!) To learn more about the Basilica’s past and present, visit the good folks at EternallyCool.net