The Dutch team are racing at their home World Championships in tulips drawn freehand by a 24-year-old club rower from Nijmegen.
Stijn van Pruissen, a seventh-year member of student club Phocas and a self-taught designer, created TeamNL’s new racing suit for the championships at Amsterdam’s Bosbaan. His entry won the design competition before passing a second test: selection by the rowers who would wear it.
The suit combines orange tulips with Dutch tricolour detailing. The pattern’s contrast fades towards the bottom, keeping the flowers visible from a distance without overwhelming the suit.
For Van Pruissen, the rowers’ vote mattered more than wider approval. “I no longer care what other people think,” he said in an interview with the KNRB. “I want them to feel good in it when they are rowing flat out. It is important to feel great during your race so that it goes even better. This contributes to that.”
Club Kit Becomes a Calling Card
Van Pruissen began rowing at DDP (De Drie Provinciën) in the 2010/2011 season. He trained five times a week in his early racing years, although two seasons disappeared during the pandemic. After joining Phocas, he moved straight into racing and served on several club committees.
His design work grew from the merchandise committee. In 2022, he designed an all-in-one for Phocas’s five-year anniversary celebrations, then developed a commercial clothing line for the whole association. The club granted him a full exemption from other duties to concentrate on the project.
Around 1,500 garments carrying his work have since been sold, ranging from racing suits and logos to shirt prints and clothing for groups within the association. When the TeamNL competition appeared online, fellow Phocas members flooded him with messages telling him to enter.
He once hoped to make the national team as a rower. “Rowing has become part of my identity,” he said. “I have an internal drive always to get better. Where are the best? With the Dutch team, of course. So that was what I wanted to become.”
He eventually decided that he could not sustain the required training volume. Design gave him another route into the Dutch squad.
Four Concepts, One Tulip Pattern
Van Pruissen submitted four concepts after studying TeamNL’s visual identity rules. He also taught himself how to build a three-dimensional version of the design during the process.
The email telling him he had won initially caused confusion because it did not explicitly congratulate him. “I thought: have I won, or have I received a typo?” he said. Once certain, he called his parents and girlfriend to tell them the good news.
His final concept began with an internationally recognisable Dutch motif. “I thought: clichés exist for a reason,” he said of the tulips. He incorporated the national flag into the flowers, with orange tulips on the back filled by red-white-blue colouring.
The harder task was setting the pattern’s density. Too little contrast would disappear across the course; too much would overwhelm the suit. “Making something beautiful while sticking to the rules,” he said. “The basis is easy. It is the details that make it beautiful.”
He also kept the overall concept simple because it needed broad support. In his view, a pattern gives an otherwise plain all-in-one more depth, but the design still had to appeal to an entire national squad.
Home Water, Familiar Faces
The World Rowing Championships are underway and the Dutch rowers are performing well, the final day of racing is scheduled for 30 August. The international competition brings elite and para crews from more than 60 countries to the Amsterdamse Bos park. The Bosbaan last staged the Worlds in 2014.
The Netherlands retained many established combinations after winning eight medals at the opening World Cup in Seville. As Row360 reported after selection, the haul included three golds, while the remaining medals were split between three silver and two bronze.
Among those wearing Van Pruissen’s suit will be Percijn van Haeringen in the men’s quad. The pair know each other and have rowed together as well as in opposing crews. Amsterdam will be Van Haeringen’s first World Championships.
“The Worlds are a special memory, and this suit is part of that,” Van Pruissen said. “Nobody wants an ugly suit at their first Worlds, especially not in the Netherlands in front of all their friends and family.”
Van Pruissen plans to spend two days at the Bosbaan watching his design race. His parents and girlfriend will join him, along with friends who saw the project begin at Phocas.
