Conversation with Ting Cui '25.5: Figure Skating Costume and Fashion

Figure skating is among the only highly competitive sports where fashion and costume plays a role. Since the first Winter Olympics in 1924, figure skating costumes have evolved through decades of controversy involving restrictions, gender roles, socioeconomic inequity and potential judge biases — but also through pure creativity and series of innovative design evolution. 

Ting Cui ‘25.5 is a Team USA Figure Skater and the 2019 Junior Worlds Bronze Medalist. When she’s not studying political science at Middlebury, she travels across the country to practice and compete. This past season she competed at the FISU World University Games in Lake Placid, NY and US Figure Skating Championships in San Jose, CA. 

In this transcript of a conversation between me and Ting, we discuss the process for acquiring a figure skating costume, her thoughts about costume in the skating world, the various controversies surrounding its role in the sport, and her personal experiences and preferences in figure skating fashion.

Madeleine: What is the process like for acquiring an outfit for each competition or show? How do you or you and your coach decide what you wear? 

The process is pretty simple and it starts pretty early on in the season (1). As soon as you pick a piece of music for your program for that season, either short or long (2), you start brainstorming on the costume, because there’s usually a pretty limited number of designers that can create good quality dresses, or tops if you’re a man. So you need to order it in advance and then also the design process takes awhile. Once you establish the music, you reach out to a designer for some sketches and then send the music to the designer and the designer comes back with usually three or four options for dress designs based on when they hear the music  — so you relinquish a lot of freedom and liberty to that designer. If you’re more controlling of this process or just more creative in general, the skater themselves can get involved. So for me, I usually really like to be a part of the process and I usually communicate with the designer a lot, as soon as we have the music, as to what I want: the colors I’m thinking, the style, whether I prefer short or long sleeves for that program, the skirt length, the cut, the silhouette, there’s a lot of components to it that are just the skater’s to play with, so I have a lot of fun with it. 

Whenever you get these sketches back, usually within a couple weeks because the designer will be working on multiple different skater’s dresses at one time at the beginning of the season, it’s a really exciting moment — you open your inbox and you can’t even imagine what they’ve sketched out and created for you and it ties the whole program together. 

After the whole design process you also have two fittings, one as soon as they’ve created the bodice for it, just for you to go in to cinch it in a few places, to extend the skirt a little longer or shorten it, depending on how it falls on you, and then you go in a second time for the finished product. Sometimes you’ll go in again during the season if you need to make changes to the dress or add more stones.

For me as a skater, whenever I saw the costumes it always gave me a better sense of the mood and the storyline for the program. One year I skated to music from Giselle, the ballet — Giselle lost her mind and became a ghost to come back and haunt her lover. The costume was a nice pearl white and decorated with gold stones. It just gave it a very royal, sophisticated and elegant look that helped me translate that into my movements and the idea I wanted for the program. 

Another year, I did a Spanish Flamenco program and I kind of flipped it around and did it the opposite way. I was late to the season and a little behind, but I was able to find a pre-made custom dress for someone else that was on sale, and so I saved a lot of money. If you get them pre-made they can be a couple hundred dollars cheaper. On average, they can range from $1,000–$4,000, depending on which designer you go to.

Is this something you and other skaters have to pay for out of pocket? 

For most skaters, yes, this is something you or your family pays for. Since I’m on Team USA, depending on the year, how well I’ve done, and what tier of the funding envelope I’m in, they will sometimes cover it. I’ve had it covered in the past, currently I’m on a lower tier so it’s not covered anymore — I’m a little craftier with it. Sometimes I find the dress first and then find the music to go with it. Usually if I find the dress first, it fits me and it’s on sale.

Do you think figure skating costumes unfairly influence the audience and judge perceptions? What do you think about banning costumes in competitive settings? 

I don’t feel like it unfairly influenced judges. The way that costumes are integrated into the actual scoring of the sport, it’s not really like we have different sections in that scoring process. We have the technical side and the artistic side: in the artistic, which is also called the components side, you have the performance, skating skills, interpretation, things like that — and now the rules have changed a lot over the years, even I can’t keep up with it. On the components side, costumes would factor into interpretation, so if you have a really nice costume that fits well with the music, usually the audience is more invested in your performance, the judges are more invested in what you're doing. Just like how having a costume sets the scene, it helps the skater create a story, and it helps the judges and audience follow along with that story. It’s always really exciting, seeing the skaters come out before they even start, when they enter the ice and you see them in their costumes — just looking at them in that, you can get an idea of what the theme of their program is going to be. It plays a kind of neat role there, but it’s not directly scored. There’s really very little impact on your score. I’d say a bad costume can be un-aesthetically pleasing to certain audience members or judges, but they won’t really cut your score that much because of it.

I also don’t think it’s unfair because you have so much liberty and say in the whole design process. This is very much within your control. Although it’s being judged by other people, you have coaches, choreographers, fellow skaters along the way that like to share their opinions because it’s a fun process, and so unless you look at it from a socioeconomic standpoint, you won’t go out there looking bad. 

The finances are a different thing. Not everyone can afford many thousands of dollars to pay for a costume. What some skaters do is them or a family member buys the bodice of the costume and stones it themselves — that’s what my mom has done in the past and it works just as well since she’s a little crafty. And then Karen Chen’s (3) mother actually makes her costumes, full on from start to finish, and she’s an Olympian — her dresses always look gorgeous.

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But even with those adaptive methods and craftiness, would you say there’s still an inequity aspect to it? 

Definitely. Sometimes you just can’t afford the nice costumes so you have to think around the box a little bit. I have certainly done that in the past.

I know that on some college figure skating teams, the teammates will trade and exchange costumes among each other. Have you participated in that practice?

Yeah, if you have a similar body type as another skater, it’s great — I just borrowed my friend’s costume for a show this year and I’ve lent out my costumes for my friends to borrow at competitions. On a bigger stage, I’ve lent out one of my dresses to my friend who was on a pairs team (4) but is now retired — she has competed on the biggest stages with it: Grand Prix (5), World Championships, so that’s pretty cool to see my dress out there. I’d say there’s a lot of sharing. I think it’s a lot of fun and a really great way to try out new styles as well, especially if you’re skating to a program in a style you haven’t done before. When I had never skated to a jazz program before I was able to borrow my friend’s costume to try it out. I didn’t get to keep that program, but I got the opportunity to skate it out, looking nice and giving the judges the full image of what that would look like. 

But sometimes I will say it’s less frequent because a dress becomes iconic to one skater and one program. When you see that dress, you automatically just know that that is that skater’s dress from that year doing that program. An example would be Mariah Bell’s (6) hallelujah dress which was absolutely stunning — no one would be able to borrow that because you would never be able to pull it off the same way and it’s already associated with something so great.

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Another one would be Gracie Gold’s (7) Sleeping Beauty program — she had this gorgeous blue ombre dress that was stoned up to her neck and it was simplistically gorgeous — just iconic dresses you can’t really exchange. 

One possible tricky situation is if you have a costume violation, which happens if a piece of your costume falls off on the ice and creates a potential obstacle for the next skater, which they then have to go on the ice and clean up before the next skater. If you have a piece of fabric that rips off, or if a lot of stones fall off at once, then they have to clean it up and it’s a time violation as well. 

The other instance of a costume violation is if the costume is too risque, too out there. 

Is there a certain set of standards that define “risque” or is that up to the judge’s interpretations?

Katarina Witt (8) used to wear really short skirts in that they would almost not really look like skirts, almost just like a peplum off of her leotard — this was back in the 80s. The rule was created because of her: you couldn’t show too much skin, it couldn’t be too scandalous, because it was distracting for judges or audience members.

Today, it’s still controversial if you show too much or an unnecessary amount of skin. I saw a girl with a costume one time where there was no fabric over her breasts — they were only covered with a pattern of stones, and so among the coaches, there was a small debate over whether it counted as a costume violation because there was no fabric, even though there was skin colored-mesh underneath. They questioned whether it was enough coverage — this is where we see skating being a very traditional sport in that sense.

Do you remember what the verdict was? Was it a violation? 
No, I think she was fine, because she was a child as well, roughly 13 or 14, pretty young. 

In skating, you’ll often have what’s called packaging sessions, when you go to high performance camps like I’ve been to in the past. They require you to have a one on one meeting with a packaging specialist to go over costume ideas to make sure you’re not too out there and not straying away from what US figure skating likes to see, which again is more traditional, so nothing avant grade.

So then that whole, ‘why are you looking at a child in that kind of scrutinizing and objectifying way’ part comes in. 

Yeah, there’s an idea in figure skating as well, that women are hypersexualized, especially at a young age. Figure skating favors younger athletes and their body types just because of how younger bodies are more aerodynamic. The traditional view sees girls go through puberty and get curvier, which is seen as not as ideal for the aerodynamics of skating. That’s a very traditional view, though. 

Figure skating is one of the only sports where the female side is more popular than the men’s side. If you look at a lot of other sports, the male teams are always dominating in popularity. 

What do you think about the sexism in the correlation between the high controversy around figure skating clothing and it being a female-dominated sport? 

It’s very sexist because the costume doesn’t matter for the male figure skater at all — they could go out wearing black pants and just a white dress shirt that you could find at Macy’s or something. The process isn’t as intricate or involved for the male skaters, especially in singles. I would say in the disciplines like pairs and dance, where a man and woman are coupled together, that’s maybe where it gets more involved, because the man can’t look too bland next to the woman. However, I’m a woman single skater, and so compared to the men’s single division, costume for them does not matter at all, and what’s funny is that Nathan Chen (9), the Olympic champion, absolutely flawless and impeccable — one of the biggest critiques for him during the 2022 Olympic season was how ugly his costumes were, just because there was hardly anything else to pick on. But did that matter? No, not really. He was wearing a tie-dye printed shirt, but it doesn’t matter as much, because he’s Nathan, he’s a guy skater. 

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Is the artistic or component aspect still considered in the scoring for men’s figure skating? 

The artistic aspect is still there, but I will say costume plays a lot less into that than just the overall quality of skating, because the men’s side in general is less performative than the women’s. They focus more on the jumps and spins and technical elements, so even in their division, the component category matters less.

You mentioned earlier that you borrowed a costume once for a Jazz program. Can you talk a little bit about how figure skating costumes look different when the music is in a genre other than classical? 

I’ve skated to fun things for shows and I’ve seen fun things being skated to for shows — Ava Philstrom ‘26.5 (10) skated to “I love it” by Iconca Pop artistically and she had a really fun costume to go with that that you wouldn’t normally get to see. It was an ombre of a shade of hot pink I think, with a neckline that went all the way up in black with interesting cut-outs throughout. I don’t remember the exact design of it, but I remember looking at it and thinking I had never really seen anything like it. That’s kind of where you get to play around with things a little more. 

For ice dancing, they’ll do fun costumes — one year this group did a disco-themed sequined red party dress that you could literally wear out somewhere and it was really nice. 

I have this one beautiful Jazz costume, it is gold with a little bit of silver, sequined and stoned all over the bodice. The straps criss-cross over an opened-back silhouette and the skirt is fringe with strips of sequins, so fun — when you twirl it’s not that one fluid piece or a couple of pieces just floating, it’s very much funky and I’d say a more staccato movement on the ice. 

Would you say that the way that the costume moves as you’re skating also influences which costume you pick? 

Yeah, I’d say it’s a consideration in the design process, because I’ve had designers ask me what type of skirt I like and where I want a cutout for a skirt. Most of the time you don’t do just a full circle of fabric, you add a cutout in there somewhere for more movement. It changes the way that the skirt flows across the ice and the shapes that it makes. 

What is your favorite costume that you’ve ever worn for a show and why? 

My favorite costume ever worn actually has to be from this past season. I’ve worn it so many times now competitively on stages like US Nationals and The World University Games (11). It’s just a versatile costume — it’s pretty and graceful and elegant and it works with any kind of music that’s in my genre, including classical, but I’ve also skated to Adele in it. It’s my favorite dress partly because I got it from my designer as a resale item so it was super cheap. My designer actually made it for herself, but we're the same size so it fit me like a glove. I’ve had college skaters come up to me that tell me the dress looks like it’s made for me, because it fits me so well and the colors work so well with my skin. My designer had a really hard time letting it go because it’s so beautiful that she wanted to keep it even though she wasn’t skating anymore. It has a very balletic leotard cut, so it’s sleeveless. It comes down in like a “V”-shape roughly, a little bit cinched at the top and again that leotard look. It’s ombre from bright pink to orange to gold, almost like the color of a sunset, and it has a very long skirt, longer than a single skater would normally have. Usually it’s ice dancers that go for longer skirts. The fabric is so thin and floaty that it's almost ethereal on the ice because the air just goes right through it and lifts it up. 

Footnotes:

(1) The figure skating season varies for each skater but roughly begins in June and ends February.

(2) In higher level figure skating, competition is divided into two segments which each skater must perform: the short and the long program.

(3) An American Figure Skater, 2017 U.S national champion.

(4)  In figure skating, “pairs” are partner skating, whereas “singles” are skaters that skate individually. All figure skaters choose one or the other — those that skate with a partner, only skate with their partner.

(5) The ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating is a series of senior international figure skating competitions organized by the International Skating Union.

(6)  A former American Figure Skater, 2022 U.S national champion.

(7) American Figure Skater, two-time U.S national champion.

(8) A former German figure skater, a two-time Olympic champion, and regarded as one of the greatest ladies’ singles figure skaters of all time.

(9)  American figure skater, 2022 Olympic champion and a three-time World champion.

(10) Middlebury student and figure skater, class of 2026.5.

(11) An international multi-sport event organized for university athletes by the International University Sports Federation.