U.S. skiing star Julia Mancuso shows off a bronze dress to match her Sochi medal (Photo)
U.S. Alpine skier Julia Mancuso has always courted attention for her flamboyant attire. Throughout her career, Mancuso has received plenty of both positive and negative attention for wearing a tiara on the medal stand and elsewhere, but she has a flair for fashion sometimes missing from other Olympic athletes. She has an image, and she's not afraid to flaunt it.
[ Related: Why Julia Mancuso was so surprised ]
It turns out that Mancuso's eye for fashion sometimes has a connection to her performance on the slopes. In a recent photo posted to Facebook and Instagram, Mancuso showed off a bronze dress along with the bronze medal she earned in super combined last week.
The caption tells the story:
In Torino, I got a gold ring, I won gold! In Vancouver I got a silver shirt, I won silvers! In Sochi, Mom gave me a bronze dress(she thought it was gold), I won bronze. Last #sochiselfie #sochi2014 #Olympics woohoo!
It's a pretty neat coincidence, even if it seems like Julia's mother Andrea should have asked for a second opinion on the color. You never know when faulty color identification can doom your child to a third-place finish.
[ Watch: Mancuso not hanging up tiara just yet ]
Or maybe Julia Mancuso is trying to make her bronze medal seem like fate? During the Sochi Olympics' first week, Mancuso spoke to Steve Veres of Today.com about the dress. She did not call it bronze:
Julia Mancuso isn't a superstitious person, but why risk it? "I've been thinking gold lately," the Olympic skier told TODAY.com. Her choices even trickled down to wardrobe selection.
Before Vancouver her mom Andrea bought her a sparkly silver shirt. "And I then got a silver medal," Julia noted.
Andrea was more careful this time in dressing her daughter for Sochi success. "She got me a present, and then pulled out a gold dress," Julia said. "'I made sure it was gold this time,' she told me."
Mancuso also referred to the dress as gold in several Instagram photos that date back as far as three months, so it's possible that she has only recently turned it into a bronze dress.
While accuracy is nice, this change is really no big deal. Clothing is an extension of personal style and taste, and slight differences of opinion in color are common. If one person's cyan can be another's aqua, then what was once a gold sequined dress can become a bronze sequined dress with no substantive change. Let Mancuso's wardrobe be her own personal playground.
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