42 of the best figure skating costumes of all time | Golden Skate

42 of the best figure skating costumes of all time

moonvine said:
Well you could give us some details lol.
Click to expand...

I was in another online forum for over a decade and unless you knew my style of posting, people thought I was trolling simply because of my brevity. :biggrin:

As for the costumes they posted, many are a bit bland and poorly designed for me. To this day, Shoma Uno's costumes are some of my absolute favorites over a span of many years.
 
Cosmopolitan has questionable taste at best because I think they give too much credit to vintage, but I do agree with Tara's long program dress in 1998.
 
well... I disagree that these are great... some of them are awful... some are bland... some don't even seem to fit well...

and of course, this seems to be a very outdated list made by a person who actually has never seen much figure skating.

it's hard for me to appreciate the costumes from the early days too... they were a completely different kind of outfits, more like what someone would wear skating outside on a lake and I guess that perhaps, that's what did happen back then, (not the lake part but skating outside).

there are a few great costumes there : Adam's and Surya... and there are some atrocities or just plain ones

Also the representation of winners or medalists tends to imply that the person who made this only looked at photos from podiums or newspapers (or news site)... because there were definitely skaters nowhere near the top with fabulous costumes.

no idea why Johnny Weir and Tonya Harding are one this list ;) I'd put them in the opposite list..
 
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4everchan said:
well... I disagree that these are great... some of them are awful... some are bland... some don't even seem to fit well...

and of course, this seems to be a very outdated list made by a person who actually has never seen much figure skating.

it's hard for me to appreciate the costumes from the early days too... they were a completely different kind of outfits, more like what someone would wear skating outside on a lake and I guess that perhaps, that's what did happen back then, (not the lake part but skating outside).

there are a few great costumes there : Adam's and Surya... and there are some atrocities or just plain ones

Also the representation of winners or medalists tends to imply that the person who made this only looked at photos from podiums or newspapers (or news site)... because there were definitely skaters nowhere near the top with fabulous costumes.

always.. no idea why Johnny Weir and Tonya Harding are one this list ;) I'd put them in the opposite list..
Click to expand...
I suspect they chose the names they wanted on the list first and then looked for costumes by those names.
 
moonvine said:
Agree or disagree?

And GO

www.cosmopolitan.com

42 of the Best Olympic Figure Skating Outfits of All Time

If only all sports utilized this much chiffon and glitter.
www.cosmopolitan.com www.cosmopolitan.com
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I saw it more as a history of costumes representative of different eras' styles. However, any article riddled with grammatical and factual errors isn't to be taken seriously. e.g. #12: Her and her partner William Fauve placed 10th.... Oh, please. SHE and her partner, and his name is William Fauver.
 
Honestly, I can only say that I liked two of the costumes included in the list!

#32 KIM Yun-A (KOR), Vancouver 2010
#40 Evgenia MEDVEDEVA (RUS), PyeongChang 2018

I was dithering over #28 Shizuka ARAKAWA (JPN), Torino 2006, so I did a search to see what the dress looked like from a different angle. But when I saw her just standing upright in it, I didn't like it.

Except that I couldn't be bothered, it would have been interesting to look at alternative photos or videos of all the costumes. Because I have a feeling that some of the photos used aren't doing the costumes any favours. That the costumes actually look better than the photos are showing.

CaroLiza_fan
 
Of these, I really love Yuna Kim's, Shizuka's, Michelle Kwan's Lyra Angelica one (less is more), Sasha Cohen's, Gracie Gold's ...
 
It looks like what happens when someone who knows nothing about skating is assigned to write about skating fashion at the Olympics. Their solution is to let ChatGPT write the article. The skaters were at various Olympics but very few were interesting from a fashion point of view.

Come on only one ice dance couple???

Where is Maddy Chock's 2022 Alien costume? Not a great shot

Or Jayne Torvill's brilliant cape costume for the 1984 Paso doble OSP?

A worse shot , but in color

Bestemianova & Bukin's FD costume in 1984 were quite good (Russian folk music)

As was Klimova's

Getty Images

Getty Images. Find high resolution royalty-free images, editorial stock photos, vector art, video footage clips and stock music licensing at the richest image search photo library online.
www.gettyimages.dk www.gettyimages.dk

Isabelle & Paul Duchesnay's 1988 Savage Rites FD costumes were memorable

Getty Images

Getty Images UK. Find high resolution royalty-free images, editorial stock photos, vector art, video footage clips and stock music licensing at the richest image search photo library online.
www.gettyimages.com www.gettyimages.com

And really going back, Dick Button's sweater with skaters on it is also memorable- and warm for outdoor skating
www.nytimes.com

Dick Button, 95, Figure Skating Champion and TV Commentator, Dies (Published 2025)

He won an Emmy for his enthusiastic and sometimes acerbic analysis on sportscasts, but before that he made history as a two-time Olympic gold medalist.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com


Did I like any of the picks?

Johnny Weir's swan costume. The glove became the Swan's beak, his arm her neck. It was very effective.

It was at its best when the swan is dying at the end of the SP,

Here is a pretty good shot



And the shot of the pair Knut Schubert and Birgit Lorenz with his teal colored skates to match his pants
 
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I think @dorispulaski is right and ChatGPT wrote it (all these Olympic female champions really had the best outfits?). However, I quite liked number 3 (an old one that still looked nice to me), and I was glad to see Adam Ripon in 2018 was included. I missed Jane Torville's fantastic cape costume too (that was just sublime), and Madison Chock has shown in the last few years to present all kinds of magnificent costumes, whether it's the aliens or the snakedance. Too few ID people in all, I think. I like Aljona and Bruno's outfits as well in 2018, while there were no costumes of either Shoma or Yuzuru. A bit of a hit and miss, as is usual when ChatGPT is used for this kind of thing.
 
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