It’s official—Olympic mania is in full swing. By this time next week, all eyes will be on the athletes as they go for gold at the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Although style and sport may seem worlds apart, fashion plays an important role in the Games—just ask Stella McCartney, Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren who design the apparel for Team Great Britain, Team Italy and Team USA, respectively.

Here at home, The Bay—our country’s iconic department store—has the honour of dressing Team Canada. We spoke with Suzanne Timmins, Senior Vice President and Fashion Director of The Hudson's Bay Company who oversees the Olympic design team, to get the full scoop on outfitting our athletes for the biggest event of their lives.

Canadian Olympic Apparel: “Let’s bring it back to Canada”

The design process for the London Games started just as the Vancouver 2010 Games ended. “One of the reasons the Vancouver 2010 collection was so successful for us, other than it being the Canadian Games, was that we featured iconic Canadian items,” Timmins explains. “Canadians really adopted it.”

That was in stark contrast to the Beijing 2008 Olympic collection. “We learned our lesson hard when we did the 2008 Summer Olympics for Beijing,” Timmins says. “We built that collection as a nod to Beijing and China.” When it came to the London 2012 Olympics, Timmins and her team went back to basics. “We said “OK, let’s take the same premise that made the Vancouver collection strong, which was bring it back to Canada, [and] make it feel Canadian.”

Canadian Olympic Apparel: Design inspiration and vintage Canadiana

The Bay outfits Team Canada for five different elements of the Olympic Games: the Opening Ceremonies, Closing Ceremonies, podium presentations, award ceremonies and the villagewear (what the athletes wear when off-duty). For the London 2012 Olympics, Timmins and her 12-strong team built an inspiration board that had “a vintage old backpack with different crests and badges [on it] from all the different provinces as well as different countries. We had a fisherman sitting in boat with a summer toque on who looked like somebody who might have been up the Gaspé, and guys riding their bikes and wearing windbreakers.”

Past Olympic collections, like the pieces created for the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, were another inspiration. “We love the colour blocking that they used and we thought that looked very modern and very today,” Timmins explains. “The 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm where they [Team Canada] just used the Maple Leaf on their chest also inspired us.”

Read more about Suzanne's style tips for the London 2012 Olympics, her Olympic obstacles and memories on the next page...