By ALYCE BROWN
NEW YORK (AP) — Ralph Lauren revealed Team USA’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics looks Thursday, complete with Americana knit sweaters and plenty of vintage call-backs.
The formal opening ceremony look pairs a patterned red, white and blue knit sweater with tailored cream trousers and a matching wool coat. Moving sportier, the closing ceremony outfit features a graphic puffer coat inspired by vintage ski kits over a color-blocked sweater.
“We are creating something that we know has to become timeless and has to be something that people will wear forever and appreciate forever,” said David Lauren, the Chief Branding and Innovation Officer at Ralph Lauren. “So in creating jackets like this and creating things, we’re looking at the things that we most cherish. Things that are already enduring parts of the Ralph Lauren lexicon, and then we’ll build on that.”
Beyond the ceremony looks, a Team USA collection, which will also be given to athletes as Olympic village wear, became available to public Thursday.
The collection follows similar design themes as the opening and closing ceremony looks, with classic red, white and blue patterning on lots of knits, and includes Ralph Lauren’s versions of winter staples like bomber jackets and hockey jerseys.
The process of creating these looks is a long one. The Ralph Lauren team, which has been designing Team USA’s Olympic apparel since 2008, starts on each Olympics’ looks about 2 1/2 years out from the Games, meeting with athletes and brainstorming ideas for the kits. As Milan-Cortina’s looks are unveiled, Lauren said the looks for the 2028 Los Angeles games are already months in the making.
He knows the cultural importance each Olympics’ outfits holds, and the attention they garner in the fashion world and among American consumers.
“The fact that we know people will want them and collect them and chase them down across eBay, is just an exciting part of the game,” he said.
Sometimes, even international Olympic athletes are on the lookout for them. Beyond being an addition to an American athlete’s Olympic wardrobe, the pieces are also sometimes used as bargaining tokens in the Olympic village.
Para snowboarder Brenna Huckaby and snowboarder Red Gerard explained to The Associated Press that there’s a tradition of swapping team sweaters and jackets with other nations at the Olympics, if there’s a certain country’s design that catches an athlete’s eye. That’s only if there’s a piece of their collection that they’re willing to let go of, that is.
“I rarely trade, because I almost always love every single piece of Team USA stuff,” said Huckaby, modeling the color-blocked closing ceremony sweater that she said “is going to be on rotation after.”
“But every now and then there will be some random thing that another country has. And it’s so hard to sit with all my bags, all my stuff open, like, ‘OK, what am I willing to part with?’ That is probably, aside from competing, the hardest part of the Games,” she said.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics