Malaysia's outfit at Paralympics opening ceremony wins love from Tokyo 2020 Twitter account

The Malaysian Paralympic team’s attire has caught the attention of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee which tweeted a photo of the team during the recent opening ceremony of the games. The tweet was cheekily captioned: "Aiyo! We just wanted an excuse to use that. We just love your outfits Malaysia."

https://twitter.com/Tokyo2020/status/1430146548415926282

The outfit was designed by the fashion design department at Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), with its students and lecturers specifically selected for the task. Ruslan Abdul Rahim, professor and dean, faculty of art and design told A+M that the department was in contact with the Malaysian Olympics committee and proposed some designs for the Malaysian contingent, including the Paralympic team. The design selected was inspired by Hang Tuah and is a contemporary adaptation and presentation of traditional motifs while retaining the essence of the Jalur Gemilang. 

"[This task] is also seen as our contribution to the nation in our own little way via creativity. In the costume's totality, the vision of a modern touch to the traditional is what the students' aspirations are," Ruslan explained. Tokyo 2020's tweet garnered over 10,000 retweets and over 20,000 likes along with other well wishes from Malaysian social media users. 

According to statistics from Meltwater from 25 to 26 August, there were 1.39k mentions around the Paralympics and the opening ceremony outfit, and most of the chatter came from Twitter (1.35k). Chatter around the outfits peaked at 11 pm on 24 August and 10 am on 25 August, with 94% of them being positive. Among the list of top keywords included "kontinjen negara", "malam nanti", "the patterns" and "the colours.

Meanwhile, statistics from Digimind showed that conversation topics around the Paralympic Games peaked on 24 August with 6,650 mentions. Among the key topics included "traditional tampuk manggis", "sporting traditional tampuk", "aiyo", "siti nooriasah mohamad" and "powerlifting champion". According to Digimind, 58% of the sentiment was positive.

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