The Opening Ceremony (OC) of the Olympic Games: the runway of all national Olympic teams
Bucharest and Singapore, July 2024 — Team Romania and the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee (COSR) reveal the official ceremonial outfits designed by Gyarfas Olah for the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony parade; Brandient assisted COSR with the selection of the designer and guidance throughout the project.
The one moment where the athletes take center stage without having to perform for the attention; the one moment where the athletes are applauded for qualifying, for showing up as a part of their national teams, and for participating in one of the greatest shows in the world.
The Olympics are not about politics, despite the inevitable tensions and speculations in the run up to the games. And although all athletes train for medals, they are also not solely about winning either. The real game of the Olympics is soft power.
And no moment is more crucial for soft power than that of the Opening Ceremony — not only for the hosting country, but for each individual competing national team, walking the proverbial catwalk, sporting costumes that are meant to reflect the essence of their home country and, of course, to honour national pride.
The role of the parade costumes is quintessentially fulfilling the two fundamental tendencies defined by sociologists when it comes to fashion: that of social equalization (unity, belonging, integration) and individual differentiation (singularity, diversity, originality).
This push and pull might explain why the choice of OC uniform designs are never without controversy. Think of Ralph Lauren’s consecutive outfits for the US team, dismissed as “boring”; Berluti’s recent designs for the French Olympic Team, dismissed as reminiscent of “PanAm flight attendants.” Not even Issey Miyake’s designs for the Lithuanian team in the 1992 Olympics, today considered iconic and exhibited in museums world over, dodged the bullet.
Sometimes, however, National Olympic Committees take chances and venture beyond cookie-cutter formulas… and we believe the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee (COSR) is one of the winners this year.
In anticipation of the OC that will take place on July 26th — and, for the first time in Olympics’ history, that will unfold on 90 flat-bottom boats across the Seine river in Paris — we are proud to stand by Team Romania and COSR as they reveal the official ceremonial outfits designed by Gyarfas Olah for Team Romania’s parade.
Inspired by the Olympic motto of “unity in diversity”, Gyarfas Olah’s designs are a modern take on casual sport/athleisure, assembling a cohesive collection made up of several complementary items, all aligned under a very clear aesthetic direction. The predominant color of the collection is yellow: a defining colour for Romania’s national identity and mythology, and also a symbol for optimism, gold and victory.
The tendency for Olympic ceremonial fits, as we have seen over the last century, is to follow the gender normative formula: men wear suits, women wear skirts, all identical in color and shape — the diversity of each individual athlete lost in the sea of homogeneity.
This time round, Team Romania athletes could choose what they prefer to wear: comfortable trousers, shorts and skirts alike in different lengths, in yellow or navy-blue, all put together by the Team Romania silk and cotton T-shirt that displays the embroidered Team Romania logo. The official Romanian Olympic committee will be wearing the tailored wool navy-blue suits, and the same silk and cotton knitted T-shirt as the athletes.
To an agency of designers, the attention to detail does not go unnoticed: we loved to see the intricate embroideries and “letterpresses” of our Team Romania logo in the silk T-shirts, on the crisp casual jackets as well as on the tailored wool navy-blue trousers. We applaud this level of respect and precision for the craft (and love for our logo!)
Finally, it brought a big smile to our faces to see the images from the final looks fitting moment captured by Romanian photographer Alex Galmeanu: it’s undeniable that the athletes exude an air of confidence, comfort, playfulness and joy that is hard to simulate.
Witnessing the complex process of bringing to life a collection for the OC uniforms was truly humbling. It’s not just any fashion collection — it’s an endeavour that demands stellar project management, one capable of coordinating several key stakeholders and delivering hyper-personalized items (given athletes’ “atypical” clothing measurements), whilst ensuring quality control and artistic direction cohesion every step of the way.
We are grateful to designer Gyarfas Olah for envisioning and closely managing the production of this collection, and to the wonderful team behind Pandora Prod, the experienced Romanian textile factory that activated a special crew to work exclusively on the project.
The production of the collection would have not been possible without the strategic support of Dedeman. Sponsors include label Ami Amalia who supplied the socks, as well as Ecco and Triumph for footwear and accessories.
Brandient assisted COSR with the selection of the designer and guidance throughout the project, and we congratulate COSR President Mihai Covaliu and his team, for their trust and unfaltering faith in the process.
We look forward to seeing the Team Romania athletes proudly saluting the crowds along the Seine during the Opening Ceremony, in crisp looks that will hopefully make them feel seen, loved and supported by their home country: united in spirit, diverse in identity.
This is what the Olympics are all about, after all.
Team Romania, we are proud of you!
About Brandient
Brandient is an independent brand strategy and design consultancy founded in Bucharest in 2002 by Aneta Bogdan, Cristian Kit Paul and Mihai Bogdan — never part of a global network, working directly for the owners, CEOs and boards of its clients, with an all-senior team and category exclusivity. In over two decades the firm has created or rebuilt more than 300 brands, 279 of them published as case studies at brandient.com/work — from Romania’s national leaders to brands carried worldwide. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. The work has earned 84 international awards and distinctions — most recently a Red Dot (2025) and two Graphis Golds (2026) — 64 documented mentions in international design books and publications, and, in 2015, a place among the inaugural inductees of the REBRAND Hall of Fame, alongside Interbrand and MetaDesign.
About the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee
The Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee (COSR) is the national Olympic committee — founded in 1914, carrying its present name since 2004 — the autonomous body responsible for Romania’s participation in the Olympic Games and for Team Romania, the brand under which its athletes compete. Brandient rebranded the committee in 2015 with a dual identity, institutional and marketing, and created the Team Romania commercial emblem in 2023–2024: the COSR case, the Team Romania case.