Danvers talks track and field fashion
Olympic 400m hurdles bronze medallist Natasha Danvers is one of the coolest cats on the circuit. She gives spikesmag.com her take on fashion in track and field and her special plans for the coming season.
Athlete, radio presenter, singer, artist, personal trainer and fitness model Natasha Danvers is one of the most hyperactive athletes in the sport. Rarely sitting still for five minutes, her fertile, creative mind is happy to move from one project to the next –
she seems to be equally accomplished in all she tries her hand at.
With refreshing honesty Danvers describes herself as having a ‘short-attention span’. But if there’s an area that captures her attention most it’s fashion.
She has future aspirations of working as a fashion designer and has been daring enough to wear an all white outfit and a skirt when racing. Fashion, she argues, is something that track and field must embrace to raise the appeal of the sport.
“Athletics isn’t like football where passion is ingrained in the culture,” she says. “Athletics is a sport that a lot of people don’t watch. We need to draw more people to the sport by making it more entertaining and a sport that people want to take part in.
“We need to make the most of people who change their skirts and hair – look more at the likes of Phillips Idowu, and Bershawn Jackson. Sanya Richards and Walter Dix wore those arm pieces last year, too, although I would say arm pieces are not for gentlemen,” she adds giggling.
Danvers fondly remembers when she first used to watch athletics on TV in the Eighties and early Nineties, mesmerised by the outfits on show.
She loved the daring tutu donned by Olympic 400m hurdles champion Sandra Farmer-Patrick and the originality of 1992 Olympic 100m champion Linford Christie’s track attire. But one woman made the sport magic according to Danvers – the world 100m record holder Florence Griffith-Joyner.
“Back in that era you could be a bit more creative,” she explains. “Flo-Jo had the nails, the long flowing hair, the outfits. She was beautiful. That one-legged suit was the way to go.”
Danvers thinks that today’s kit sponsors are stifling creativity – restricting athletes to the same kits and preventing the opportunity for innovation.
Nonetheless, the US-based Londoner doesn't have to work under such constraints – without a kit sponsor since 2003, she promises fresh designs for the summer ahead.
“I am a very creative person and I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was younger,” she explains. “I always used to re-design my Barbies. I used to change her outfits and give her something completely new to wear. Hopefully I can be creative with my own image and do what I want to do and add my style to things.
“A fashion designer I know called Ania Hatch (an Olympic silver medallist in gymnastics at the 2004 Athens Games) is designing me an outfit. I like the fact that she is a gymnast because they wear the kind of outfits I like to run in."
Danvers is encouraged by the number of athletes who are prepared to be daring. She loves the fact Cameroon’s Olympic triple jump gold medallist Francoise Mbango competed in a skirt in Beijing. She also liked reading spikesmag.com’s story that revealed Olympic 100m hurdles champion Sally McClellan’s vow to compete in a skirt.
So why is fashion so important to the 31–year-old mother of four-year-old Jaden?
“I feel more confident when I know I look good,” she explains.
“I know beauty is only skin deep but I think people feel better and more outgoing when they look good. They tend to shy away when they look like crap. I like to look good off the track, so I don’t see why I wouldn’t want to look good on the track.
“It’s hard to stay feminine on the track but I want to be feminine in whatever I’m doing.
I have this thing where if I bumped into Barack Obama I would hope to look good. Otherwise I would be thinking: I can’t believe he is seeing me like this!
“First impressions do count."
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