Here's something that I've been pondering for a while:

These days, fashion (and especially so sports fashion with its close connection to youth culture), has become very globalized. So, why is it that most Asian badminton players still wear shirts that look like fruit salads while most European players seem to be more "trendy", wearing stylish shirts with one or two flat colors? I'm not saying that I want all nations to have the same aestethics, not at all, I'm all for local variation. But I'm genuinely curious about this: does anyone have any ideas why badminton would differ from other sports in this sense?


There are of course exceptions, but let me demonstrate by showing a couple of examples from recent World Badminton news.

Definite fruit salads:
<img src="http://www.worldbadminton.net/images/ChenHong-Japan01.jpg"><br>
<img src="http://www.worldbadminton.net/images/Polsanaok.jpg"><br>
<img src="http://www.worldbadminton.net/images/KimJH.jpg">


More in the "global sports fasnhion vein":
<img src="http://www.worldbadminton.net/images/CamillaMartinok4.jpg"><br>
<img src="http://www.worldbadminton.net/images/Sullivanjapan.jpg"><br>
<img src="http://www.worldbadminton.net/images/PGadeOK.jpg">


And here you can see both variants!
<img src="http://www.worldbadminton.net/images/hoyermainaky.jpg">

Hihi... actually I do prefer the flat colours. My fav jerseys so far:

1)Indonesia's Thomas Cup 2000 jersey: Red and Black with zip in place of buttons
2)Korea's Sydney Olympics jersey: White with blue colourings
3)Danish jersey (saw this on Camilla Martin during last yr's Indo Open): Black shirt with Danish flag and White shorts

(My idea of) fashion disasters:

i)Indonesia's Sydney Olympics jersey: Red with overlapping Olympic rings
ii)Chinese jerseys with emormous sponsorship tags on the back: they make the players look like walking adverts

Note also that some players look good in certain jerseys and not-so-good in others. Tony Gunawan looked great in 1) but disastrous in i); the Korean pair of Ha and Kim definitely look better in chrome yellow (Thomas Cup 2000) than red (All-England 2000). And brown (or whatever colour's that featured in the above shot of CM) is definitely not her colour!

Definitely the result of an overdose of my dad's "Colour for Men"... pls ignore.

i think yonex had gone overboard with some of the color design of their jersey. I saw alan budi kusuma of INA wearing a white jersey with a big blop of red on the right front side. It looked like he was playing with a blood soaked shirt.

Its probably leisure wear for tropical settings.Have you been to

Hawaii ,Mag?Of course they look ridiculous in a badminton hall

in winter.How do you post images on message board, Mag?

i know what u mean. quoting u, Adel "Definitely the result of an overdose of my dad's "Colour for Men"... pls ignore." i think i suffer from it too.

Maybe female players should dress like Venus Williams. Of coures I can't imagine Gong dress up like Venus.

ur kidding!!! lolz. dress like Venus???? I would think that quite a few would be too conservative to wear such an outfit.

my fav is INA's Olympic 200 jersey!! even they were wearing it in asia cup!!

Mag, a lot of those designs look like the sort of Adidas and Diadora tennis wear that Lendl and others started to wear in the mid-late '80s.

No matter which side of the fashion/fruit salad discussion you choose, nobody will look as bad as Andre Agassi did when he was hyping that strange line of tennis wear. Big baggy pants to his knees, floppy t-shirt, and a strip of cloth (had to be a meter long) tied around his head for a sweat band. Hope he got a lot of money for that product endorsement. Wonder how much of it he spent buying up all of the tapes?

Sorry for getting off-topic.

some of the Malaysian players are still wearing their national team jerseys from erm, like 1996. the white one with the colorful shuttlecock on the right hand side.

I'm not so sure Marshall. I think that Mary Pierce trying to cram her muscular, athletic and not-exactly-waifish body into one of those Anna Kournikova style dresses looks pretty awful. I also think Kuerten looks pretty ridiculous in his new-fangled, brightly colored, mis-matching outfits looks pretty much like a street urchin; not to mention those silly black socks.

Agreed. Once again, badminton shows itself superior to tennis, even in matters of bad taste. Fruit-salad shirts are high style compared to the examples you just cited.

lolz. Not all of them r dat bad. Unless u wanna put da Williams sisters inside.

maybe the younger malaysian players get their jerseys from retired players (hehhehe). Actually asia's fruit salad is not true, cos i saw candra and sigit wearing single color in Asia Cup.

come to think of it, I think so too.

It's true - Candra & Sigit seem to have some taste... And while I admit to making grave generalizations I think you all know what I mean.

Btw, England's Kelly Morgan is quite a fruit salad girl too... so I guess it swings both ways huh?

i saw kelly morgan once when she came to calgary to play the canadian open. She has the most efforetless strokes i even seen.

Y'know, during the Asia Cup, after Candra and Sigit changed from their fruit salad shirts into black ones, my clueless friend went, "Huh? How come the Chinese are playing with a different pair?" =P

Btw Mag, how do you paste pictures onto your msg???

I think the fruit salad shirts look nice. The newer ones you described look so plain and 70s-ish.

yeah, those things are so darn colourful.. its so funky its cool! i would buy them if i were any kind of good player, and if i could afford them :P

Yea... they remind of those nice hawaiian shirts are supposed to be in style right now (or was it last year.) Anyway, i think the shirt looks nice, but the shorts are way too short! It does not match at all. I think they need someone pick their outfits for them. Do they have enough budget for a fashion consultant? ;)

its just cool to see a guy dressed up in a messed up oil painting wizzing around the court smashing and dropping lol. the shorts are cool if you have thighs like the chinese national ladies :P Yonex hasn't caught on to Western culture and its baggy shorts.. but short shorts are actually more comfortable when playing badminton

I thought it was only me who thought that a lot of high-level badminton players look like fools in their multi-colored outfits. I know from living in Japan that part of the reason for this must be because of different fashion trends in different areas of the world. In Japan, I often found that flashy, multi-colored sports wear was quite trendy, and having seen what other international level players sometimes wear, I think the same is true in a lot of other countries.

Don't get me wrong - I say that the fashion trends are different in Asia, but fashion is always different around the world.

Here's a question, though: Don't you think that having elite players wear tacky, bright, 1980's - style clothes hurts badminon's image when seen on TV (when that happens)? Really, sometimes I just have to laugh when I see the shirts they wear...like clown college or something. I can only imagine what less open-minded souls must think.

On TV, image is everything...and fashion sells better than the sport itself in many cases. Just check out snowboarding, cycling, tennis, surfing...people sometimes seem to do sports just to go shopping for some cool (overpriced) clothes to wear.

Originally posted by TOmike
its just cool to see a guy dressed up in a messed up oil painting wizzing around the court smashing and dropping lol. the shorts are cool if you have thighs like the chinese national ladies :P Yonex hasn't caught on to Western culture and its baggy shorts.. but short shorts are actually more comfortable when playing badminton

I'm not sure I'd feel that comfortable in shorts like that.... my legs are that well developed :o. I'll stick to my baggy shorts, thanks:cool:

Just goes to show "one man's meat is another man's poison"! At one time, IBF rules demand pure white for both shirts and shorts. Now almost anything goes - outlandish colours and all, though they still can't match their tennis counterparts, esp. the ladies like the Williams sisters. Maybe badminton is still one up on table-tennis in this respect. However, I've still not witnessed collarless T-shirts worn during major badminton competitions, although you see many of these during tennis majors.

Maybe colours galore is good for the TV and badminton should continue to captalize on this. However, I wonder who calls the shots when it comes to design. It appears that big names like Yonex still dominate.

i think ibf calls the shots but i'm sure yonex do talk with ibf on these matters in some fancy restaurants. I personally think colors do add another dimension to that sport, especially if manufacturers and ibf want to sells something. Look at some popular american sports, basketball, hockey, football, those sport gears are quite colorful.

Originally posted by bigredlemon
I'm not sure I'd feel that comfortable in shorts like that.... my legs are that well developed :o. I'll stick to my baggy shorts, thanks:cool:

Are NOT... i meant to say NOT...

whoops.

i quite like those fruit salad shirts - i dont suppose anyone knows where i might get one from????

Originally posted by Robert Neilson
i quite like those fruit salad shirts - i dont suppose anyone knows where i might get one from????

get a white t-shirt, few buckets of paint, have some creative fun. :D

Originally posted by jwu
get a white t-shirt, few buckets of paint, have some creative fun. :D

and when you start sweating, you may find your skin turning into shades of red/green/purple!!! :p

Get outdoor based at least! Or better yet, clothing dye.

Originally posted by bigredlemon
and when you start sweating, you may find your skin turning into shades of red/green/purple!!! :p

Get outdoor based at least! Or better yet, clothing dye.

or just use body paint. start the new badminton fashion. players w/ "war paint" on during matches. :D

Originally posted by jwu
or just use body paint. start the new badminton fashion. players w/ "war paint" on during matches. :D

LOL! That will definetly strike fear into your opponents... though not nessarily fear of your badminton skills:p :p :rolleyes:

They'll be thinking... who let this crazy topless guy in are club? security!!!

lol

shall itake that as a no as to no one knows where to get the fruit salads from :)

where do u guys get ur clothing from anyway - are there any good websites???

search for luxis
they sell

sorry back to seriousness. :D yeah you can find badminton fruit salad shirts at numerous websites. at the homepage of www.badmintoncentral.com near the middle of the page there is a link for badminton retailers. also do a quick search for retailers on the forum and you will find more store info. just go to their sites and check on clothings. good luck. :D

Originally posted by TOmike
the shorts are cool if you have thighs like the chinese national ladies :P
Haha, someone called Zhang Jiewen's 'thunderthighs'. Tsk tsk. :p