LONDON, June 9: The leading British designer Paul Smith was charged with coming up with the official summer suits for the England team. He found he had to switch his choice of colour from fashionable navy blue to middle-aged beige after the intervention of the boss - Hoddle that is - not Hugo.

"We went for lunch and I suggested navy," said Mr Smith yesterday. "He was adamant he wanted beige. He wanted a light colour because it was a summer tournament and that was that." Mr Smith says the suits look "fantastic ntastic in sunshine" - he cheated a little. "They're not actually beige, they're taupe."

That slight darkening was, says Mr Smith, in response to one of the football's most public fashion disasters, the 1996 FA Cup final when Giorgio Armani designed Liverpool's white suits. They lost. This year Arsenal wore all-black Hugo Boss... and won the double.

Platini blasts French officials

ASSOCIATED PRESS/ PARIS June 9

Michel Platini,co-president of the World Cup organizing committee, says French authorities have turned their back on the soccer tournament and aren't providing enough support.

"France has done what it had to do, but nothing more," Platini said in an interview published yesterday by the newspaper Le Parisien. "Take the big party in Paris on day one, for example. Can you believe that it's been hard to get authorizations? They don't give a damn," he was quoted in the interview.

Platini said it had cost 50 million francs ($ 8.3 million) to organise festivities into the night on Day One featuring huge processions and concerts around the capital.

The World Cup has already been undermined by a strike by Air France pilots, threatening to disrupt travel during the month-long tournament.

No wigs, no tartan caps, no paint

AGENCIES/ PARIS, June 9

Beware the Tartan Terror. French customs officials didn't like the look of the Scottish fans who arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport before Wednesday's openeragainst Brazil. They told the Scots to remove their ginger wigs and tartan caps and wash off the face-paint before they would let the fans through customs.

"It is absolutely ridiculous," said 36-year-old Andy Finley, who was wearing a tailor-made black tartan suit complete with waistcoat and top hat.

"It took me hours to paint this flag on my face and the next thing I'm told to wash it off or they won't let me in the country because I don't look like my picture in my passport."

The Scots have never gone beyond the first stage in their previous seven appearances but feel that that this time they could move up as the second placed team in their group.