Olympic figure skating fashion: Behind the costume designs

FIGURE SKATING COSTUMES gleam under the lights at Milano Ice Skating Arena at the 2026 Winter Games. With every twizzle, lift and lutz, thousands of sequins and crystals — often Swarovski — bedazzle and glimmer. “It’s not just a little uniform you put on to do your sport. It is literally a piece of art,” says designer Lisa McKinnon, who has crafted costumes for Team USA skaters Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito, among others in Milan. The range of designs, whether Lady Gaga- or Madonna-inspired, an extraterrestrial being or a national landmark, must also have full mobility and function.

A costume can elevate or undermine a program, and skaters risk penalties if any part of their outfit falls off during the routine. However delicate they look, skating costumes are engineering feats draped in spandex and chiffon. They must endure gravity-defying jumps and, in pairs or ice dancing, strong grips and holds. As U.S. skaters dazzle at the Milan Cortina Olympics, earning gold in the team event, ESPN spoke with designers, skaters and choreographers to uncover costume secrets and stories.

Costume design typically starts as a collaboration between the designer, skater and choreographer. “The process is a little bit different for each skater because they’re different people,” McKinnon says. McKinnon encounters a range of approaches. Sometimes, the skater and choreographer arrive with a color in mind; other times, conversations begin more open-ended. “Usually, I get a quick rundown on the program. What the vibe is. Is there a message with this program? What’s the style?” McKinnon says. “I take that in. I sit down with my iPad, listen to the music on repeat and just start sketching.”

“I’ll loop the music and listen to it probably 20 to 30 times while I’m designing,” says Pat Pearsall. Pearsall got into the business when her youngest daughter started skating in the late ’90s. “It was difficult to get costumes,” says Pearsall, who designed costumes for 2018 bronze medalist Mirai Nagasu. “Finally, I threw my hands up and said, ‘That’s it. I’m never being held hostage over a costume. I am going to make these myself.'” She ripped apart her daughter’s bathing suit, sewed it back together and added a skirt. That was over 30 years ago.

For Pearsall, meditation has become part of her design process. “When I’m making a dress, that energy of consciousness is imbued in the very fabric. The dress designs itself.” Once she has a sketch and it gets approved by the skater, it typically takes Pearsall a day or two to sew the costume. She then accessorizes it with crystals. A high-end costume — prices can range from $500 to $4,000 — may contain as many as 4,000 crystals. Everything is done by hand. “If I’m putting a lot of stones on a dress,” Pearsall says, “I could go through two tubes of glue.”

Every addition to a costume adds weight, a critical consideration for athletes. “I don’t think people realize how heavy stones are,” American figure skater Starr Andrews says. “You have to consider, do I really want to be wearing a heavy dress? Or do I want it lighter? For me, I don’t care. I just want to be sparkly.” Pearsall’s costumes can weigh from a pound to 2 pounds. In 2018, Nagasu became the first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics. Her bold red Pearsall costume, inspired by James Bond movies, were designed with minimal adornment after a long discussion about weight.

When Liu debuted a revamped free skate program set to Lady Gaga music at the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January, she needed a fresh costume. McKinnon drew inspiration from Gaga’s “Bad Romance” music video, designing a silver metallic costume with a mid-torso mesh cutout and a bedazzled neckline with crystal spikes and chains. “I love when you can add in a little bit of an edge,” McKinnon says.

In keeping with one of Gaga’s looks from the video, Liu envisioned a heavily padded left shoulder. But the shoulder was too bulky and created problems during Liu’s jumps. “We had to keep tweaking it,” McKinnon says. “I think we redid it three times.” McKinnon met with Liu in her St. Louis hotel room before the U.S. Championships for a final fitting. “I just started cutting away. We were trying to find white thread. I ended up getting a travel kit from CVS,” McKinnon says of the silver medal performance costume. In Milan, Liu is expected to return to her MacArthur Park routine for the individual free skate event, and debut a new costume designed by McKinnon.

Kaitlyn Weaver, a former Olympic ice dancer and current choreographer for Glenn, had a very specific image in mind when she considered Glenn’s short program costume, set to Madonna’s 1989 song “Like a Prayer.” Madonna, of course, but perhaps more unlikely, if not just as fitting, Joan of Arc. “These are women who are iconic for their strength and for going against the status quo,” Weaver says. “That’s how I see Amber.” Glenn and Weaver used the words “strength” and “vulnerability” to describe what they wanted to convey through Glenn’s skating and costume. McKinnon’s design, a burgundy lace piece with sleeves draped off the shoulder and bold chain necklaces artfully adorned over the collarbone, delivered on both.

“With Amber, we saw this program’s potential to be something big,” says Weaver of Glenn, who is making history as the first openly queer American woman to compete in singles at the Olympics and uses her various platforms to speak up for LGBTQ+ issues. At the U.S. Championships, Glenn’s Madonna routine set a new short program record of 83.05 points, followed by her third consecutive national title. Weaver emphasizes, “The right costuming can’t win for you, but it can help,” noting how aesthetics help audiences understand the story on ice.

“Choreographically, I’m thinking about will the design show off the body, will the design show the lines we’ve created?” says Katherine Hill, who choreographed Glenn’s free skate. “These athletes work so hard to be able to lift their leg high and create these shapes and bend the way they do. From my perspective, my mind’s ensuring that the costume enhances that and doesn’t take away.” In addition to discussing music and color scheme, Hill and Glenn chose navy to reflect a siren. The choreographer sends videos to McKinnon so the designer can envision how the outfit will look on ice.

When Canadian pairs skaters Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps debuted the first skating costumes designed by Oscar de la Renta, it was just the latest example of the long-standing relationship between the sport and high fashion labels. Vera Wang, a former figure skater herself, is perhaps the most famous, having designed costumes for Nancy Kerrigan, Michelle Kwan, Evan Lysacek and Nathan Chen.

At the Olympics, skaters and designers must abide by the International Skating Union’s dress code. Regulations state, “The clothing of the Competitors must be modest, dignified, and appropriate for athletic competition – not garish or theatrical in design.” In 2004, women skaters in singles and pairs were no longer required to wear skirts, opening the door to trousers, tights and unitards. Building on these changes, Weaver, a member of ISU’s Ice Dance Technical Committee, helped push for a similar update in 2022. “There’s room for this sport to move into the 21st century and really feel like these skaters can come out and wear a costume that represents them to the best of their ability,” Weaver says.

Traditionally, male skaters’ costumes have been more muted than those of their female counterparts. “It was like, ‘Oh, just put on a black shirt from Ross Dress for Less and call it a day,'” David Paul says. “As a fan, I would be like, it just shows me you didn’t give a damn. But once they did, that made me become more invested in their program.” Paul and his husband, Nick Verreos, are both fashion designers and consulting producers for “Project Runway.” They have been writing about skating fashion since the early days of blogging and host a podcast called “The Fashion Daddies.”

“We have really been loving Ilia Malinin,” Verreos says of the 21-year-old skater known as “Quad God.” Malinin’s short program and free skate costumes are both created by Japanese designer Ito Satomi, who got her start working for a dancewear company. “We like the fact that a lot of the male skaters are getting closer to mirroring what female skaters are doing costume-wise,” Verreos says. “We know that sometimes it’s baby steps to get them out of their comfort zone and become a little showy.”

It’s every skater’s — and designer’s — worst nightmare. A zipper sticks. The fabric tears. A wardrobe malfunction derails an otherwise flawless routine. “Redundancy in closures, if you’ve made costumes for any length of time, is absolutely imperative,” Pearsall says. McKinnon sometimes sews hooks and eyes in both directions to ensure her closures don’t come undone. Handsewn beads are secured with multiple knots in case a thread snaps.

Regular wear and tear, though, can erode a designer’s best efforts. “They’re so small and tight, you really have to wriggle to get into them. Things can break a bit when you put them on,” McKinnon says of the performance costumes. “It can happen to anyone,” designer Mathieu Caron says. “Costumes are used for a full year, and athletes wear it about 10 times from delivery.” For ice dancers, it’s not uncommon for coaches to have needle and thread on hand so they can literally sew their skaters in, both to prevent the bottom of a costume from riding up and for extra security.

“It’s a science,” Weaver says. “At the end of the day, it has to be beautiful, but it also has to function. Most skaters can tell you a horror story of something that was really beautiful, but they couldn’t breathe in, or they got a wedgie.”

Costumes for pair skaters and ice dancers present unique challenges. “There’s another person grabbing my body and throwing me around,” Weaver adds. “It needs to have another layer of durability. The skirt can’t be too long because we have four blades on the ice that could potentially step on it.”

Madison Chock and designer Caron understand this challenge all too well. The frequent collaborators made multiple changes to the ice dancer’s matador costume for her flamenco-inspired routine throughout the season. Chock is the matador; Chock’s partner and husband, Evan Bates, is the bull. Initially, Chock’s costume featured a flowing, ankle-length skirt lined with red fabric on the inside that doubled as a cape. But, Caron says, “the first skirt was a little bit too long,” and made it difficult for Chock and Bates to execute their lifts. Ultimately, they decided to hem the skirt and use a lighter fabric.

Chock and Bates are three-time world champions and two-time winners of the ISU Best Costume award, which was first awarded in 2020. Chock and Bates’ ensembles in the past have been inspired by everything from aliens to Salvador Dalí to the Chrysler Building. They have all been designed by Chock, who works with Caron to bring the vision to life. In 2023, Chock started her own design brand. “Normally she arrives with an idea and has a clear vision of what she wants, and we talk about the technical aspects and the theatrics,” Caron says.

Andrews, a pewter medalist at the 2023 U.S. Championships — where she became the first Black woman to medal in 35 years — and an alternate on the women’s team, draws inspiration from movies, shows, fashion designers and even wedding dress makers for her costumes. She sends all of these ideas to McKinnon, her costume designer for the past 10 years. Just as important as the design itself, McKinnon accurately matches the mesh paneling of the costume to Andrews’ skin tone. “I think the more you involve yourself with the dressmaking, the more unique it is,” Andrews says. “It’s a way to express yourself.”

Since starting her own design company in 2014, McKinnon says skaters are getting more intricate with their outfits and pulling ideas from couture fashion. Innovation in stretchy fabrics has given McKinnon more options to work with than when she first started, pushing the boundaries of what can be conveyed with a few yards of fabric, some thread and crystals. “Your costume is your armor,” Weaver says. “You put on a costume, you want to feel like a million bucks. It’s what the world sees of you.”

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