When U.S. figure skaters Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu and Isabeau Levito take to the ice to compete at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, they all wear dresses designed by the same woman.
The designer’s name is Lisa McKinnon, and she’s outfitted all three women competing for Team USA in singles figure skating events, plus two American ice dancers and two South Korean skaters at these Olympics. Collectively, the seven athletes are set to compete in at least 13 costumes from Lisa McKinnon Designs, a Los Angeles-based studio that McKinnon launched in 2014.
McKinnon works between 40 and 60 hours per week, regardless of the season, she tells CNBC Make It. She and her five employees handmade nearly 700 costumes, for skaters across every discipline and level, in 2025, she estimates. The business charges $90 per hour, and its custom costumes for high-level skaters typically cost between $4,000 and $8,000 apiece, she says. (McKinnon declined to share the business’s total annual revenue.)
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Most clients, regardless of their desired final product, have to request costumes at least six months in advance, and McKinnon’s team often works on a costume up until the deadline, she says. The timeline is largely due to demand, and to budget time for costume emergencies or special requests.
One such special request: In December, Liu — the reigning world champion — asked McKinnon to design her a new dress for her Lady Gaga-themed program at the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in early January. McKinnon finished the dress in a hotel room in St. Louis on the day Liu competed in the costume, the designer says.
“I really care so much about every single project that I do. A little blood, sweat and tears are a totally common thing for me, [though] I don’t cry as much [these days]” says McKinnon, 47.
Skating is ‘in my blood’
McKinnon, born and raised in Sweden, grew up a figure skater and made her first competition costume for herself at age 15. She didn’t have any crystals, which are commonly glued onto skating dresses, so she hand-sewed paillettes — sequins secured onto the fabric with tiny beads, she says.
She began making costumes for other skaters later that year, after a request from a member of the Swedish national team, she says. But mostly, she pursued her own skating career — eventually performing in professional shows like Disney On Ice for eight years, then working on them as a performance director for another eight years, she says.
McKinnon started spending her summers between shows in the U.S. starting in 2006, and after leaving the skating world, pursued jobs supervising costume departments in Las Vegas and then Los Angeles. In 2013, she was the costume supervisor at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California, when an old friend — who was a skating coach at a local rink — asked if she’d design a costume for a student, she says.
The dress was eye-catching enough for other local parents and athletes to start coming to McKinnon, she says. She quit her job in late 2014 to launch her business, she says, and has since built a reputation for making costumes that add storytelling to each individual skating routine’s theme.
Within a year, some of the country’s top stars living in or near Los Angeles, home to multiple high-level skating coaches, were competing in her costumes. One early Los Angeles-based client, Ashley Wagner, was already a multi-time U.S. national champion when she started working with McKinnon. Another, Karen Chen, later competed in multiple Olympic Games, winning a gold medal in the team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
McKinnon vividly remembers the first time she saw her designs on national television, she says: Wagner and Chen wore them on the podium after winning silver and gold at the 2017 U.S. National Figure Skating Championships.
“I drank a lot of champagne and I definitely shed some tears,” says McKinnon.
Her business is small, relative to its demand. To keep up, McKinnon arrives early in the morning to do paperwork and often stays late to tidy up, tossing scraps of fabric and reorganizing crystals, she says. Competitive skating and costume designing both require determination, resilience and ambition, she adds.
“I’m really competitive. I want to do the things I’m good at, and I want to be the best,” says McKinnon, adding: “Once you’ve skated, it’s always going to be a part of your life somehow. It sticks with you. It’s always been part of my life and I feel like it’s in my blood.”
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