While fashion week in Cape Town is being lauded a roaring success, it seems everyone forgot one important area of fashion where the whole world would see South Africa — The Beijing Olympics.

Topping the worst-dressed list at the games opening ceremony isn't really a punt in the right direction for our home-grown designers, who were obviously not consulted when it came to matters of olympic fashion.

This fashion award was handed over by the New York-based fashion-critique blog, Street Boners. South Africa earned top spot on the worst-dressed list by accessorising their white uniforms with lime-green Crocs!

Symbolic of our country in general

Although Crocs are pretty much universal (and not of SA origin as you may think), everyone knows they are not synonymous with class or taste, but rather popular fashion gone wrong — is this symbolic of our country in general then?

We are trying so hard so grow the business of fashion in South Africa and the 'Proudly South African' brand, but failed to think ahead to the Olympics.

Apparently Crocs sponsored Team SA and so it was an obvious choice, but to make matters worse they had to chose green. My biggest question however is — was there no other brand out there willing to back-up our national pride?

Maybe someone should have told the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) to contact Darkie — he could have sorted them out with some funky green and gold outfits that athletes would have been proud to wear.

As for shoes, wouldn't New Balance, Salomon or Adidas be more appropriate? Hell, maybe even a shoe like Tsonga which is made in South Africa would have done the trick?

Then again perhaps they could have just called in a stylist before the event, or even asked for some opinions at least...

So what about function?

But forgetting fashion for a moment, it seems there have been serious problems with the South African Beijing kit in the function department as well, according to www.mydigitallife.co.za.

Apparently very few athletes have kit in the correct size and the clothing has been made of tracksuit fabric — which is, of course, perfect for the hot sticky weather in Beijing...

Says www.mydigitallife.co.za, "when our athletes are not being held hostage or chafed by their kits, they are swimming in bags of kits three sizes too big".

The kit is reportedly a mix of Mizuno and a local company called Sedgards.

Sports website Sportsscientists.com also reported that the kit and clothing supplied to the athletes is substandard — so substandard, in fact, that the labels and embroidery on the athletics vests says 'Beljing' instead of 'Beijing'.

Maybe substandard performance by our team doesn't buy big brands, but on the other hand maybe substandard kit endorses substandard performance by our athletes.

Our tennis players have also been voted as having the ugliest kit on the court by bored fellow players. A Chinese player refused to swap shirts with the SA team manager, politely declining his offer. The guy, however, offered him one of his, voted-most-stylish China shirts.

Isn't it ironic that 'Made in China' is preferable in class to 'Proudly South African'.