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Paul McCartney’s daughter isn’t getting a medal for Britain’s Olympic outfits

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Stella McCartney (center) joined Team GB and Paralympics GB athletes to unveil the new adidas Olympics kit. Pictured from left to right are Tom Mitchell, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Stella McCartney, Tom Daley and Olivia Breen. (Ben Duffy/adidas via Getty Images)

There’s only so much a designer can do with the official outfits athletes wear at the Olympics, but Stella McCartney may have outdone herself with her duds for Britain’s competitors in this summer’s Rio Games. And, as with most Olympic designs, hers are meeting with mixed results.

McCartney, the daughter of former Beatle Paul McCartney, combined the colors red, white and blue with a coat-of-arms motif and a gigantic “G” and “B,” with the idea behind the clothing (besides sales for adidas) being team unity and a quickly identifiable image.

“Besides standing out from the crowd, Team GB needs to look cohesive together. There are so many different personalities, all these completely different sports and schedules,” rugby player Tom Mitchell told The Guardian, “and the kit is important because it unites us as a team. When you’re walking around the village, it creates that immediate link.”

Vogue’s Luke Leitch explained what McCartney was striving for.

“For Team GB, McCartney turned to heraldry: a newly commissioned coat of arms featuring the symbols of the four nations of Great Britain is designed to stir patriotism,” Leitch said. “Sometimes cut, blown up, cropped, or rendered in silhouette or block color, the motif is used on nearly all of the hundreds of different event-specific pieces of apparel in a variety of different ways. Contrasting with the flowery hither-and-thither of the coat of arms, McCartney has opted for a blocky, basic, unfussy font. ‘The goal for Rio 2016 was to rewrite the rules of performance and design for the athletes, allowing them to look and feel like champions on and off the field.'”

Part of the line was unveiled Wednesday, and not everyone was pleased…especially by the jackets.

And, yes, the swim duds modeled by Tom Daley are skimpy, but it seems unfair to rip McCartney for that. Have you seen what Michael Phelps wears? Kudos to McCartney for somehow getting a coat of arms on there at all.

Not everyone was negative, though. The Guardian’s Jess Cartner-Morley wrote: “The proud puffed chests of the lions on the coat of arms made for an unmistakably patriotic image, and a confident one which stands out among the futuristic graphics that abound on most sportswear. Meanwhile, the proportions of both Daley’s and [Jessica Ennis-Hill] Ennis’s kit appeared to have taken inspiration from the Brazilian taste for barely-there beachwear.”

McCartney is also designing Britain’s clothes for the Opening Ceremonies, but those won’t be unveiled until July.