Today’s fashion designers compete to brand Olympic athletes, but in the past there were designers who actually started out as Olympic athletes. Emilio Pucci was on the 1936 Italian Olympic skiing team and Ottavio Missoni was a champion Italian sprinter and hurdler who competed in the 1948 Olympics. Ahead of the 2024 Games in Paris, a fascinating new exhibition charts the long-standing relationship between the Olympics and fashion. At the outset of the Games, back in Greece in 776 B.C., the athletes—men only—wore nothing at all. In the early–20th century, clothing for sports like tennis covered the whole body. And by the end of the 20th century, sportswear in general was sleeker, more aerodynamic, and body tight. The rise in popularity of bodybuilding and aerobics in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s led to new beauty standards and active-clothing styles. As René Lacoste, a bronze medalist for men’s doubles in the 1924 summer Olympics, once said, “It’s not enough to play and win. Style also matters.” —Isabella Carter