If Alysa Liu can continue her improbable comeback, shrugging off a two-year hiatus to win figure skating gold at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, she’s poised to cash in: Americans who top the podium at the 2026 Games will receive a $37,500 bonus from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. But while that would be a healthy payday for most Winter Olympians, the 20-year-old medal favorite has already sunk around that much into an often-overlooked expense for her sport.
“That would just be towards the costumes,” Los Angeles-based designer Lisa McKinnon says with a laugh—and she would know, having made six outfits for Liu over the past year.
McKinnon generally charges between $3,500 and $8,000 per garment, and Olympic costumes tend to fall on the higher end of that range. Those numbers can quickly add up because most athletes bring at least three looks to the Games—for the short program, for the free skate and for the exhibition gala, an unscored performance to close out the Olympics—without even taking into account other options they use throughout the season.
Unlike the leotards that the U.S. women’s gymnastics team wore at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, which were embroidered with thousands of crystals and pearls and cost about $5,000, figure skating costumes carry high price tags less because of the materials being used than the labor required to create them. Designs are iterative, often changing with feedback from the athletes, and between dying, airbrushing, painting, cutting and hand-sewing the fabric, the finished product can take months.
There also just aren’t that many couturiers who can strike the proper balance between performance and aesthetic beauty. Many of the world’s top figure skaters, especially those who compete for Team USA, gravitate to a handful of designers, including McKinnon, whose clients include Liu and the reigning U.S. national champion, Amber Glenn. The Quebec-based Mathieu Caron, meanwhile, works with Madison Chock and Evan Bates, a married American ice dancing pair who took home team gold in Beijing four years ago and will compete alongside Liu in this year’s event, which begins Friday, and Japan’s Satomi Ito designed costumes for Ilia Malinin, the 21-year-old American who is expected to win the men’s singles gold medal.
“I think that there is a level of artistry behind our costumes that people really appreciate,” McKinnon says.
The demand has created a lucrative market for the select group. McKinnon charges $90 per hour and produced between 60 and 70 custom costumes over the past year, averaging about 50 hours per garment. Caron, who will have 26 skaters at the Milan Cortina Games, has a more economical hourly rate of around $35, but his design timeline is a bit lengthier, with costumes taking anywhere from 80 to 150 hours.
When the Olympics roll around every four years, the requests for last-minute tweaks and alterations surge. As the intensity ratchets up, so does the opportunity. “Every wallet is open,” Caron says. “Everyone just wants to make sure they have the best option.”
It’s a substantial financial burden for many skaters, who typically pay for their costumes out of pocket. With a handful of exceptions including Malinin, who pulled in an estimated $700,000 from sponsors over the past year, and Chock and Bates, whose combined income is believed to exceed $1 million annually, skaters mostly have limited earning opportunities both on and off the ice.
“It’s not as if we’re talking about people who are making millions of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars every single season,” says figure skating analyst Jackie Wong. “And it’s a fairly costly sport.”
Some elite skaters receive costumes in exchange for promoting designers, but there are other ways to save money. German skating pair Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin have gotten financial support from Katarina Witt, who earned two gold medals with East Germany in the 1980s, while Karen Chen, who won team gold with the U.S. in 2022 before leaving the competitive circuit, skated most of her career in dresses made by her mother, which reportedly cost $1,000 to $1,500 each.
In another alternative arrangement this year, if Canada’s Deanna Stellato-Dudek is able to push through an injury and compete in the pairs event at the Games, she will be wearing the first figure skating dresses designed by Oscar de la Renta—a somewhat rare example of a big fashion house dabbling in the sport. (One notable exception is Vera Wang, who herself nearly qualified for the 1968 U.S. Olympic team as a figure skater and during her legendary fashion career has made costumes for athletes including Nancy Kerrigan, Michelle Kwan and Nathan Chen.)
Given the investments in their wardrobes, skaters usually try to re-use their costumes at shows, galas and exhibitions after retiring them from competition. They might also lend them out. Liu, for example, borrowed a dress from Spanish ice dancer Olivia Smart for the 2022 Games’ gala, and ice dancer Emiliea Zingas used one of Glenn’s costumes at this year’s U.S. championships in St. Louis.
“There’s a lot of the trading back and forth, reusing and recycling them,” Wong says. “They’re athletic wear that’s disguised as fashion, so they are very durable.”
For designers, while it may be hard to imagine a future when their work won’t be sought-after by world-class skaters, it’s a hard business to scale. McKinnon and Caron’s operations are small, with five and 17 employees, respectively, and hiring is always a challenge given that many prospective workers don’t have experience with the stretchy fabrics commonly used in the sport.
Still, the top designers are exploring how to tap into a broader customer base. Caron’s design studio rolled out a semi-custom platform called Iconic Skate, which allows skaters to mix and match from a series of preset options. “It’s like the Ikea kitchen, but for figure skaters,” he says.
McKinnon’s shop sells simplified costumes that cut down on labor costs and retail for between $399 and $2,000. “They need to be cheaper as well so that people can actually afford to order one,” she says.
McKinnon has a point. There aren’t many skaters who can rely on winning gold every four years.