From Tracksmith, the Olympic Blazer That Could Have Been

For what seems like the umpteenth Olympics in a row, the official blazer of Team USA was panned on arrival when it was unveiled last month, and again during the Games’ opening ceremony this past weekend. But at the Marais destination concept shop Merci, a popup by New England–born sportswear label Tracksmith offers a glimpse at an alternate reality. Inspired by archival photos of the 1924 Paris Olympics, the city’s amateur athletes who represent Tracksmith’s Federation collection—each of them stylists, restaurateurs, or architects by day and runners after hours—were decked out in figure-skimming, hand-cut navy cotton blazers made by Roman atelier Le Tre Sarte and designed with boutique tailoring house Clementina.

“I did so much research on the 1924 Olympics,” Clementina founder Emilie Hawtin tells Surface. “That style was so incredibly, mind-meltingly good, but also, they looked so modern.” For Tracksmith’s Federation blazers, Hawtin’s hybrid silhouette melds a classic French chore jacket and a sport coat, with special attention to “flattering” features like wide, notched lapels, a center back vent, and, despite its easy-wearing look, extra seams and darts throughout the shoulder for a more structured fit. The throughline of Paris 1924 even continues in the form of an interior silk mill label whose typography and coloring references athlete identification cards from a century ago.

As befits a tailor teaming up with an active lifestyle brand like Tracksmith, comfort and range of motion were two of Hawtin’s biggest priorities. Touches like that center back vent, for example, make sense in a city like Paris where going the distance might mean cycling to work in the morning and heading to happy hour at 9 P.M. In addition to wear-testing prototypes on Tracksmith staff, Hawtin enlisted restaurateur Alexander Rash, stylist Laura Vidrequin, and designer Edgar Jayet to wear it on stops along their running routes in the City of Lights. “We shot at the architecture studio, cafes, the Luxembourg gardens, the Eiffel Tower,” Hawtin says. “They looked great everywhere they went and in every situation; it wasn’t weird when they threw it on over their kit after running 10 miles, or to a café on l’île Saint-Louis.”

Olympians have spoken on how team-issued gear can languish in storage, both impossible to get rid of and undesirable to wear again. With the Federation Blazer, Tracksmith and Hawtin’s Clementina imagine an alternative future: “I think it’s important to have that balance of refinement and discretion,” she says. “This is one of the biggest moments of their lives.”