One of this country’s fondest collective memories involves a hat. At the Nagano Olympics in 1998, the flag-red poor-boy cap designed by Roots transformed both Olympic merchandising and Canada’s fashion reputation on the world stage. The design was distinctive and fashionable for the time, and the colour popped against the snowy white backdrops in photos.
In a time before internet frenzies, the cap went viral the old-fashioned way, worn by Canadian heroes such as silver medallist skater Elvis Stojko and gold medallist snowboarder Ross Rebagliati, whose marijuana controversy meant that the photo of him in the hat got a great deal of extra play.
But it was also the strategy of getting the hat onto celebrity heads beyond the Games — from Celine Dion to Robbie Robertson, Pam Anderson to Wayne and Janet Gretzky — that lent it such cachet.
Canadian Olympians at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympcis. Top row, left to right: Annie Perreault, Elvis Stojko, Ross Rebagliati, Sandra Schmirler and Jeremy Wotherspoon. Bottom row, left to right,” Pierre Lueders, Dave MacEachern, Catriona Le May Doan, Susan Auch and Kevin Overland.
The Canadian Press file photo“Some people say I know how to do that,” said Roots co-founder Michael Budman by phone from his Algonquin Park cottage. The cap even had a British royal moment, worn by Prince Charles, Harry and William in a photo op.
It makes sense the hat appealed to the young princes, because the idea for the design actually came from Budman’s son, who was 12 at the time. “Matthew was wearing a “poor boy” hat. He said, ‘Dad, this would be a really cool hat for the Olympic team to wear,’ ” said Budman.
He was right. Canada was suddenly cool, and not because of our winter forecasts. As cultural critic Geoff Pevere wrote in “Team Spirit, A Field Guide to Roots Culture,” “To see something clearly, sometimes you have to take it away from home.” The poor boy cap was just such a phenomenon. By the end of the Nagano Games, “the home of the beaver was looking a little different.”
Charles, then a prince, laughs as he wears a hat from the Canadian Olympic Team uniform at a environmental heritage event in Vancouver Tuesday, March 24, 1998.
CHUCK STOODY Associated Press file photoThe hat had legs after the Games. It was one of the first Team Canada items that became available for consumers to purchase, and you can still find them on second-hand sites today.
Then came Salt Lake City 2002, and another Roots hat phenomenon. Roots picked up the official outfitting contract for Team USA quite close to the Games, which took place in the wake of 9/11. The design of the American uniforms was subdued, appropriate to the mood, with the athletes walking into the stadium behind a tattered flag saved from the rubble. “It was very moving,” said Budman.
American actor Michael Douglas is bookended by Roots co-founders Don Green, left, and Michael Budman at Sotto Sotto in Toronto in 2002. Douglas is wearing the coveted U.S. Olympic hat, which has been sold on the black market for as much as $400 (U.S.).
LOUIE DE FILIPPISThe USA beret became the “it” accessory of the uniform. “You never know which item is going to take off,” says Budman, adding “Olympic clothing had not been fashionable before.”
The media picked up on it, which lead to a shortage: By the end of the Olympics, the Roots stores in Park City were bare. So the team rented a plane, stuffed it with garbage bags filled with some 25,000 of the hats. They arrived in the middle of the night, before the last day of the Games. There were lineups down the main street and the hats sold out by the afternoon. A total of one million berets sold, at $19.99 a pop.
“It was bananas,” recalls streetwear designer Adrian Aitcheson, who was working with Roots at the time. “That beret in Salt Lake City? People were paying cash, doing whatever they had to do” to get one. Olympic fashion is part of a patriotic moment and “the hat became a part of the magic, part of the secret sauce.”
The designers behind Left on Friday gave us the lowdown on the suits from Paris.
Aitcheson, who founded the line Too Black Guys in 1990, has a particularly long connection with Olympic outfitting. Besides his time at Roots, which spanned Sydney 2000 and Salt Lake City 2002, he also worked at HBC, during the red mitten craze of the Vancouver 2010. Most recently, he was chief design officer at OVO.
Collecting and trading memorabilia is a big part of Olympic culture for athletes and fans alike, says Aitcheson. “Whatever the phenomenon is that year, people absolutely have to have it.”
With 27 medals won, Team Canada broke its record for most medals won in a single non-boycotted Summer Olympics.
Roots also designed Olympic uniforms for the Jamaican bobsled team for Calgary 1988 (which inspired the film Cool Runnings), for Canada and the U.S.A, plus Great Britain and Barbados for Athens 2004, and U.S.A. for Turin 2006.
Budman looks back on outfitting Olympians with great pride. “Athletes want to look good,” he said. “I always say, if you feel good, you play well.”
Correction – Aug. 12, 2024
This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said the Calgary Olympics were held in 1998 instead of 1988.
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