Red Mitten Confidential: The untold story of a Canadian Olympic fashion icon

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Sidney Crosby’s golden goal, Jennifer Heil blasting down moguls, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir making figure skating fans swoon, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics offered Canadians many winning memories. It also gave us those red knitted-wool mittens with the white maple leaf on the palm.

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Perhaps you still have a pair tucked away somewhere special, since 3.5 million pairs were sold during an initial 12-month run as part of a fundraiser to support amateur athletes launched by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).

The red mittens were sold through Hudson’s Bay Co. and cost 10 bucks, just a wee bit less than the $68 that Lululemon’s padded Olympic mittens cost now. Wayne Gretzky had a pair of red wool mittens. Oprah Winfrey, too.

How did the red mittens come to be? Andrew Greenlaw was the marketing manager of the Vancouver 2010 Torch Relays, and he was there from the beginning. This is the inside scoop on a Canadian Olympic fashion icon, as told to Financial Post’s Joe O’Connor.

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Every Canadian mayor we met asked the same question: Were the candles from the 1988 Calgary Olympic torch relay going to make a comeback for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic torch relay? The ’88 candles were inspired by the Calgary Tower, and they were sold all along the torch relay route through local Lions Clubs to raise money for youth athletics.

They were a huge hit, and a big headache for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), because Canadians were lighting their candles off the actual Olympic torch as it passed through their town, and then apparently taking the candles home to light gas burner stoves, bonfires and whatever else.

All great, but the Olympic flame is the sacred symbol of the modern games, and not something to be lighting bonfires with. The IOC was so unnerved by the candles that it later adopted a rule change stating there could only be one sacred Olympic flame burning at any given time.

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Without the candles, there would have been no mittens. Mittens initially entered the picture when we were soliciting general ideas from the public for our torch relay logo. One of the ideas was for a mitten, a single mitten.

It wasn’t like, “That’s it! A mitten, we need to do something with the mittens.” It was more, “Hmm, that’s interesting.” It had struck a sentimental chord.

At that point, there was no momentum for the mittens. They began picking up steam after the meetings with the mayors, who all kept asking about the candles. Every meeting it was, “Here comes the candle question again.” We compared notes from these meetings, and thought that we could retail something — something like the candle — and so the mitten idea started circulating among the VANOC team as a way to possibly generate funds to support Canadian athletes.

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We had one critic in the Vancouver media who was pretty tough on everything VANOC did. But we presented the idea of the red mittens to them and, true story, they said, “You’ve struck gold.” Imagine what red-knitted mittens — a time machine back to our childhood winters — could do to stitch together our country and raise money for our athletes, just like Calgary did in 1988 with the candles.

Our design team found the mittens compelling. The next challenge was convincing the IOC. Its guidelines state that torchbearer uniforms should be predominantly white, including the gloves. The history of the torch relay dates to ancient Greece, Olympia, Greek priestesses, an ancient flame lighting ceremony, the whole environment is white.

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And now we had this idea for red mittens. We called Laurie Colon, who was then head of partnership marketing at the IOC. We were expecting a hard no. But they didn’t say no. So, thank you, Laurie.

Once the IOC had said yes, I thought, “This is our marketing campaign: We don’t need to buy ads. The torch relay and red mittens are going to be on the front page of every local and regional newspaper for the next 106 days.”

It was the best publicity ever. 

We launched the red mitten campaign in Drumheller, Alta. We asked the mayor there if we could put a pair of giant red mittens on the town’s World’s Largest Dinosaur roadside tourist attraction. The community actually knit a pair of giant red mittens for the dinosaur, and the local fire department helped put them on. That story exploded and was picked up by the international media.

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The actual torch relay started in Victoria. Simon Whitfield and Catriona Le May Doan were the initial torchbearers. They had on red mittens, every torchbearer did.

Here’s an interesting fact: the red mittens the torchbearers wore were custom made with grips stitched into them, so people could confidently hold the torch without it slipping.

Our initial ask to Hudson’s Bay, the official apparel provider for Vancouver 2010, was for 500,000 pairs of mittens, but it would wind up delivering more than three million. The red mittens went viral before going viral was even a thing.

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We often sold out of the mittens, creating the type of scarcity that stokes demand. Oprah — in true Oprah fashion — somehow sourced enough pairs to have every member of her studio audience wear them. Wayne Gretzky was driven through Vancouver in the back of a pickup truck with the Olympic torch in his mitten-clad hand during the opening ceremonies.

It was a red mitten frenzy. So when you ask, “Whose idea were the mittens?” the answer to me is both complicated, and simple.

I look at the mitten idea as belonging to all of us — Canadians. It was Arthur and Irene Nieuwdorp, who were credited with creating the Calgary ’88 candles, and setting the bar high. It was the mayors across the country who kept on asking about the candles. It was the person who submitted the mitten as a potential Vancouver 2010 Torch Relay logo. It was the Olympic-calibre team at VANOC who brought the idea to life. And it was the millions of Canadians who bought a pair and turned the red mittens into an Olympic and Paralympic fashion icon.

I still wear mine with fond memories, every winter day.

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