Behind the Scenes as Team USA Gets Fitted for Their Olympic Uniforms

TIME

One of the first stops U.S. Olympians make when they arrive in Paris is the Team USA Welcome Experience, located about a 30-minute drive from the heart of Paris. Run by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, for Olympians, it’s like Christmas. Every athlete is fitted for their opening- and closing-ceremonies attire and receives a duffel bag stuffed with shirts, shorts, pants, and everything else they might need in the Olympic Village.

Transcript

00:00I'm Alice Park and I've just landed in France for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

00:06I decided to make like an Olympian and headed straight for the Team USA Welcome Experience.

00:11It's located about 30 minutes outside of Paris and it's where all the athletes will come to be

00:16outfitted for their opening and closing ceremony uniforms. They'll also receive all the gear that

00:21they're going to wear in the Olympic Village. Not only will they be outfitted from head to toe,

00:26but a team of tailors is standing by to take their measurements and make sure everything

00:31fits perfectly. Let's take a look inside and see why everyone says this experience is like

00:37Christmas in July. So we've got mostly jacket, shirts and the jeans for the opening ceremony

00:45and for the closing we are attaching the patches onto all the closing jackets. For a few special

00:52alterations we are going to have to like shorten sleeves and stuff like that on the closing,

00:57but not anything major. The most common one at the moment is the closing jeans as well. I mean

01:04we've got so many different alterations across the board, so for example we can have someone

01:09that depending as well like on our sizing we could have something as simple as like a shortened

01:14sleeve, but then on the other hand we can have something where we're sizing it down to make it

01:18fit them perfectly, which you know is a slightly bigger job. We kind of do a variety of things,

01:24whatever we need to do in order to make them look good we'll make it work. Our team consists of 22

01:29tailors. We currently have a group of six that are doing the fittings, but while they're doing that

01:34the rest of the team is in here and they're all doing all the alterations. In terms of timing we

01:40can work, we can have a nice slim you know slow day depending on our volume and how quick we're

01:45working through, but a lot of towards the end of the week we will work like late, you know early

01:50into the morning, late into the night, whatever we need to do to get it done. We kind of have a nice

01:56little organization in this room so we like to make it so that it's as effective as possible

02:01for everyone so that we're working as quickly as possible. And everything will be ready by

02:06opening on Friday? Of course, it has to be.

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