Being a successful fashion designer who has experienced longevity is hard, very hard. Once the cameras and crowds from the glitzy runway shows have dispersed, the designer needs to regroup and to do it all over again, but even better. As the Paris 2024 Olympics Games begin this month on July 26, Fashion Reverie couldn’t help but notice the similarities between being a fashion designer and being an Olympian athlete.
Elite athletes and fashion designers share common traits, they both need to possess a unique blend of discipline, and unshakeable belief in themselves and their abilities. Additionally, fashion designers have that extra something in their DNA, a natural gift of a keen eye for aesthetics.
Fashion Reverie dives into the topic and nominates six living fashion designers who have a propensity for athletics. Some had dreams early in life of performing in the Olympic Games. As for the others, we speculate about which sport they would have chosen to compete in the Games.
The Figure Skaters: Vera Wang, Richie Rich
Image courtesy of wwd.com
Vera Wang: The Pairs Figure Skater
Although Wang is best known for her wedding gown designs, her earliest ambition in life was to be an Olympic figure skater. She began skating when she was only eight years old and had won regional championships by age twelve, at which point she started competing in the junior pairs skating category with James Stuart as her partner. Together, they competed twice at the United States Figure Skating Championships, winning 5th place. The pair split up after they failed to qualify for the U.S. team for the 1968 Grenoble Olympics.
Brides across the world should rejoice that Wang pivoted to a career in the fashion industry. Wang is philosophical about her decision. In a 2005 interview with WWD, she explains that she began designing bridal gowns because she had trouble finding something she wanted to wear for her own wedding to Arthur P. Becker. Says Wang, “If I could transform people’s perception of wedding gowns by making them more modern, artistic, inventive or stylish, then perhaps I could create a valuable, emotional franchise for the rest of their lives.”
In this, she succeeded and stuck the landing. She’s dressed A-listers including Ariana Grande, Hailey Bieber, Gwen Stefani, and innumerable other celebs. She’s also launched spin-off lines with Wedgwood, Kohl’s and David’s Bridal, and received three CFDA Awards honors.
Image courtesy of wwd.com
Although she is best known for her wedding gowns, she incorporated the illusion technique she famously uses into her wedding gowns as a key design element in the skating costumes she designed most notably for Nancy Kerrigan (1992, 1995), and Michelle Kwan (2002) when they competed in the Olympics. In a fitting tribute, in 2009, Wang was inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame and in 2023, WWD anointed her “The A-List Crowd’s Top Bridal Designer.”
Image courtesy of wildcatarizona.edu
Richie Rich: The Tenacious Singles Figure Skater
Richard Eichhorn is professionally known as Richie Rich, and like Vera Wang, exhibited a serious passion for ice skating from a young age and also had ambitions of competing in the Olympics. At age eleven, he moved to California’s Bay Area to actively pursue figure skating. At the pinnacle of his skating career, Rich went on tour with the Ice Capades. It was then that he discovered his love for fashion and costume. Says Rich, “Even when I was still skating, I would always hang out in the costume department with this guy named Jerry. He brought it to a level where I would rhinestone costumes and help him out.”
Next, was a critical move to Manhattan, in the ‘90s when he became one of Manhattan’s most famous “club kids,” a group of New York City personalities and club promoters who included the infamous murderer Michael Alig, Susanne Bartsch, and DJ Keoki. The group spent their evenings at NYC’s biggest clubs, voguing and showing off their self-made fashions.
Richie Rich got his start as a fashion designer when he worked as a busboy and started designing one-of-a-kind pieces to wear to nightclubs, while he worked as a busboy at Limelight. His DIY vinyl, latex and leather pieces with dramatic cutouts got him custom orders from the other Club Kids and served as the launch pad to his eventually launching Heatherette in 1999 with horse trainer, Traver Rains.
Image courtesy of refinery29.com
Everything gelled after Richie Rich went on a trip to Tokyo, where he got the inspiration to make the tee shirts that “Sex and the City”(SATC) stylist Patricia Fields pulled for Sara Jessica Parker the show’s style-guru and blogger “Carrie Bradshaw” to wear on the show. SATC was the ultimate platform for fashion and shoe designers in the early 2000s. Rich hit another career peak in September 2007 when heiress/personality/it girl, Paris Hilton, snuck out of the house to walk in the spring 2007 Heatherette show, cheered on by fans that included Madonna and Gwen Stefani.
Heatherette closed in 2008, due to internal disputes, but Rich undeterred, glided on to his next creative endeavor, and became a television personality. He never hung up his skates entirely though, when it came to fashion. In the fall of 2011, he showed his Popluxe line, and more recently Heatherette by Richie Rich in Downtown Brooklyn, at the BKLYN Studios rather than his downtown NYC stomping ground. He told BKReader, a local Brooklyn publication that he felt that “There is such an energy in Brooklyn (now).” As for the show, it could be Heatherette 3.0. Rich described it as such, “It’s Stevie Nicks meets a Club Kid and turns into a disco star.” Unsurprisingly, he has embraced social media using TikTok as the platform to launch his cosmetics brands, Btykwn (@btywkwn).
Image courtesy of gentlemangazette.com
Ralph Lauren: The Tennis Player & Strategist
Ralph Lauren had a deep love for sports from a young age. Although he played on his high school’s baseball team, once he discovered tennis, he developed a lifelong passion for the game. Had he pursued sports more competitively, particularly tennis, Lauren might have aimed for Olympic glory in his youth. He fell in love with the British sport that originated in Warwickshire England, and with seemingly all sports that the British landed gentry enjoy and consider to be an integral part of their lifestyle. Thus, Polo, tennis, and equestrianism have consistently served as ongoing sources of his design inspiration.
Lauren’s overall aesthetic also reflects a strong affinity with professional sports which is reflected in the apparel he designs, most notably tennis, polo, and golf. His company’s collaborations with the sports world took off in 2005, when the United States Tennis Association selected him as the official apparel sponsor for the US Open. Just one year later, Lauren became the first designer in Wimbledon’s 129-year history to create uniforms for the ball boys, and girls and on-court officials.
Images courtesy of wwd.com
While the RL Corporation has also partnered with the PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association of America) as the official outfitter of the 2023 United States Ryder Cup Team, the biggest feather in Lauren’s cap is his ongoing partnership with Team USA that began in 2008. Since then, Ralph Lauren has outfitted Team USA at nine consecutive Olympics and Paralympics for the opening and closing ceremonies as well as with capsule wardrobes for the athletes to wear during and post Games. This month, the RL Company is once again outfitting Team USA for their opening and closing Olympic parade uniforms. The navy opening ceremony blazer has a distinctly equestrian feel while the closing white, red and blue windbreaker looks just right for track and field.
Image courtesy of stellamcCartney.com
Stella McCartney: The Equestrienne
Stella McCartney grew up surrounded by sports and music and was an accomplished horse rider during her school years. She could have potentially pursued equestrian sports at an elite level, had she not chosen to work in fashion design. Her appointment as Chloe’s Creative Director in 1997 made her a household name in fashion circles for delivering collections that enjoyed both critical and commercial success.
She landed a joint venture in 2001 with the Gucci Group to found her eponymous label as well as lingerie, eyewear, and organic skincare and fragrance. She began to receive recognition as a pioneer in the green fashion movement, a movement that was still far away from enjoying widespread popularity. She refused to use leather and animal derived materials in her functional yet edgy designs. Her vegetarian chain link Falabella has been a “must-have” bag, since it debuted in winter 2009, despite it not being made from traditional “real” leather.
McCartney’s interest in athletics resurfaced in 2005, when she began to design Adidas by Stella McCartney. As the line evolved, McCartney gained recognition as a pioneer in the women’s sports performance category. The line is celebrated by fans for fusing adidas’ cutting-edge technology with the edgy signature style of the Stella McCartney collection label.
Another result of working with Adidas was that McCartney was appointed as Team Great Britain’s Creative Director for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. This was especially significant as this was the first time in the history of the Games that a leading fashion designer designed the apparel for a country’s team across all Olympic competitions. In 2016, after launching her swimwear collection, and the STELLA POP fragrance, Team Great Britain invited Stella back to as Creative Director for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. McCartney regularly blends her love of all things equestrian into her designs. Her winter 2023 campaign was shot in France’s Camargue Salt Flats, and starred the region’s famed white ponies and supermodel Kendall Jenner in pieces that have an equestrian feel to them. Stella McCartney continues to gallop forward fusing her love of sport and design.
Image courtesy of womenshealthmag.com
Victoria Beckham: The marathon runner
Victoria Beckham, also known as Posh Spice from the Spice Girls, made the unlikely transition from pop starlet stardom to a career as a respected and successful fashion designer. Initially, we nominated her as a gymnast, given her dancing and gyrations on stage as a Spice Girl, but ultimately decided that she would made a great addition to the Olympic Track Team. It took Beckham fourteen long years of slogging forward to experience her first profitable year in business in 2022. For this accomplishment she has earned our nomination for a spot on the Olympic Games’ marathon team.
Beckham has always had a strong interest in health and fitness, that was intensified by her 25-year marriage to soccer star, David Beckham. The couple are widely admired for their strenuous personal workout routines and physiques. David and Victoria regularly share their workout routines and healthy lifestyle tips which includes a great deal of distance and interval running. According to the-sun.com, “Posh Spice might seem prim and proper, but her social media suggests she’s a beast in the gym. Victoria squeezes in as many as six sessions every week, regardless of her schedule.”
Image courtesy of vogue.es.com
Thom Browne: The Swimmer and Soccer Enthusiast
Browne has a background in competitive swimming, having swum competitively during his college years. His experience in swimming, a sport that requires discipline and focus, likely helped to shape his approach to design and craftsmanship. He made the life changing decision to focus his talents on fashion, which turned out to be an excellent choice, as he has done swimmingly well for himself in that arena. Like many champion swimmers, he seemingly came from a lane no one was paying much attention to and glided forward to become a star.
Browne is known in the fashion world for his avant-garde designs that challenge traditional notions of menswear. His collections often feature tailored suits with unexpected twists. He shattered the traditional notion of what a man’s suit should look and feel like. In an interview with Vogue Espana, Browne explained that he believed that men should be comfortable in their suits, as they are after all, many men’s daily uniform. He controversially raised the trouser hemline and shrank the proportions to resemble a little boy’s suit and forever dispelled the idea of the uncomfortable “monkey suit” that dominated the last half of the 20th Century.
Image courtesy of Thom Browne
Like our other would-be Olympians in this article, Browne also designs for sports. In 2018 he collaborated with FC Barcelona, Spain’s legendary soccer club in a two-part design project. The first part of the collaboration was a specially created twill classic suit and tie with a cashmere 4-bar classic V-neck cardigan that the club’s players wore for their official team portrait. The second part consisted of a capsule collection of FC Barcelona- items launching in support of the Barca Foundation, the club’s charitable organization that supports vulnerable children and youths through educational sports projects. Browne revamped several of his signature looks with the football club’s iconic colors and patterns, yielding a selection of knit items and summery suiting. There was a shrunken blazer and short set off by crisp white shirting with the FCB crest. A snug cardigan, knit hat, tie, scarves and socks in Barcelona’s branded color palette and corresponding text accessorized with Browne’s familiar tri-color grosgrain ribbon rounded out the capsule. Accessory fans could pick up complementary pebble grain wallets and folios that featured matching crests, perfect for FCB-diehard.
The fashion designers we have highlighted have showcased their creativity on the runway as well as demonstrated their potential to excel in the world of sports. While they may not have all pursued Olympic careers, their experiences in sports have without question influenced their approach to fashion, blending functionality with style to yield sporty and stylish results.
Vivian Kelly
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