Jay Bird

Watching the opening ceremony of the Bejing Olympics and seeing all the gorgeous national costumes from the various privinces of China got me thinking about the English national costume. The other three countries of the UK have one, what do we have? I vote for raincoat, wellies and umbrella...........any other ideas?

Gettingtheflipout

If yo'ud believe the Daily Fail, the men should be in tracky decks, hoodies and burberry, the women should be in pink and white toweling and cheap glitter, and all attractively draped in .5 carat faux-gold and should be clutching a bottle of white lightening while vandalising a bus stop.

I personally think we should break out the Morris Men costumes for our national dress, that or a Gumby outfit of string vest, knotted hankie on head and wellies.

Emma M

Burberry.

Emma M

Should have read ahead!

Mally Lass

All hail 'Shell Suits' !! for men and women !

England wouldn't allow for National Costume........ it would be deemed Politically incorrect to create a divide in the multi cultural communities !

Nu-Shooz

When i was in America, we went to Epcot centre in Disney World and the national theme for the UK was "Morris Dancers"

WTF

Gettingtheflipout

Ah disney, that great and wonderful recepticle of international culture...

Bit like the portapotty at Glastonbury after not being emtpied for three nights running- everything sort of mixes together, and nobody wants to go near any of it other than to say "gosh, yes... I'll be over here..."

Britain has no national dress, and never should. I love the fact that its a bigger "melting pot" than the US, in some respects, in the sense that we have so many different cultures here, and we all, for the most part, co-exist- we care, for example, when one culture says "that offends us", and we then try and do something about it.

I know a lot of people snear at it, but I'm rather proud of my homeland precisle because we seem to care what people think, and we kind of see it as important.

Yay britain.

Gingerert

How about a pinstripe suit, bowler hat and umbrella? For men and women, of course.

Notts_bloke

The Aussies have beaten us to it. They have blue shell suits this year.

Jay Bird

Yep, I actually agree with you......my opening post was TIC

Gettingtheflipout

I know- just got a bit of the old national pride hit me when I thought about it properly

But I would be up for a national dress if it was one that took the michael out of ourselves- couldn't stomach it if people took it seriously, but having a laugh at our own expense is sort of a British characteristic, so this should be incorporated into the costume

islandergirl

I'm Scottish so we can always swaith ourselves in tartan "shortbread tin" style. How about union jack shorts and t-shirts that say "Brits on the Piss" LOL.

I am so over the Olympics and we're only at the halfway mark - 2 out of the 5 channels in Australia are showing them non stop. The other 2 are showing re-runs of Law and Order/CSI and the ABC is showing re-runs of Poirot which I just hate.

And please don't suggest I get out and get a life, it's winter, and southern NSW is CLOSED until the October long weekend!

3 go mad in Adelaide

My god, I know just how you feel!

Tootsie Frickensprinkles

We have greatly changing history of fashions rather than any sort of national dress. But we do have a clearly defined history of clothing, the V&A full is of it!

We need an entirely different take on an opening ceremony, something celebrating our diversity of history and openess of culture perhaps .. not like you'd actually get further from China than that.

Gettingtheflipout

now, now- give 'em a chance- when they've been running the world for a few decades and have had a chance to see the world, and then consequently lose that empire to someone else (India, Sweden, Bognor Regis, who knows...), I'm sure they'll be a bit like the UK is- remember, during the height of the british empire, there was nothing we enjoyed doing than marching into other peoples countries, shoving everyone around and sneering at their cultural differences while "civilising" them

And I'm sure when Bognor rules the world, they'll do the same.