Lisa McKinnon put on her headphones, hit repeat and picked up her stylus.
“I start sketching,” she said, “and it comes out.”
As designer to the stars and stripes, having created the dresses for all three U.S. women’s figure skaters competing individually at the 2026 Olympics, McKinnon’s stylus glides around her screen like a skater on ice. With each stroke, she pieces together the costumes her clients will wear when they compete on the grandest stage in sports.
While sketching, she listens to the music her skaters will perform to during their programs.
“The music is ultimately what really inspires me,” McKinnon told NBC Local just prior to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. “I come up with the designs based on what I feel when I listen to the music. That’s how I come up with the color and the style and the lines and the silhouette. Should it be flowy? Is it modern? What is it?”
It’s Madonna on ice.
Figure skater Amber Glenn once hid parts of herself to fit into a sport that prized perfection. Now, as an openly bisexual and pansexual athlete, she’s using her platform to push for visibility, inclusion, and mental health awareness on and off the ice.
So, McKinnon put “Like a Prayer” on repeat at her Los Angeles studio. The hit 1989 song was added to her Olympic playlist after it was selected by U.S. figure skating star Amber Glenn for her short program.
Glenn and her choreographer Kaitlyn Weaver had collaborated on the routine’s choreography with one of Madonna’s backup dancers, who also offered input on the costume design.
“They just wanted it to be sexy, mature, pushing it a little bit but not too much, and just really give the vibe of ‘Like a Prayer,’” McKinnon said.
As the song played in her headphones, the possibilities danced in her mind.
McKinnon began sketching a burgundy off-the-shoulder dress with a lace corset, replicating elements of Madonna’s look in the music video. She added frill around the wrists that Glenn had requested, giving the costume movement in that area when she did the prayer hand gesture.
“And then I was like, Oh, we need the Madonna necklaces,” McKinnon said.
But she wanted it to be less figure skater and more “Material Girl.” Luckily, McKinnon was living in a material world — with plenty of fabrics, dyes and chains at her disposal.
“It needed to feel raw and simple, in a way,” she said, “but just like a big old statement necklace at the same time.”
Instead of the traditional crystal embellishments typically seen on ice, McKinnon layered necklaces, chains and pendants of varying shades, accessorizing like Madonna in the 1980s. Glenn added to the metallic collection when she wore the dress at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January and won the gold medal with a record-breaking performance.
She’ll soon strike a pose in her Madonna-inspired dress at the Olympics, while “Like a Prayer” plays in Milan, just as it once did on repeat in McKinnon’s headphones. And the “Queen of Pop” herself said she’ll be watching.
Glenn, after helping Team USA win gold in the team event, made a post showing Madonna reacting to several of the her Instagram Stories with clapping and heart-eye emojis.
“Ahhh thank you so much!” Glenn wrote to her. “Can’t wait to skate to Like a Prayer at the Olympics!”
“I cant wait to watch!” Madonna responded. “I’m so proud of you!”
‘You just don’t say no’
The podium became a runway for a Lisa McKinnon fashion show.
When the top three finishers at Nationals took their places, each was wearing a dress made by the designer. Glenn was at the top step, having just claiming her third consecutive U.S. figure skating title. Taking silver was Alysa Liu. Bronze went to Isabeau Levito.
Days later, they claimed the three spots for women’s singles on the U.S. figure skating Olympic team, meaning McKinnon would be dressing each for the Games being held in the fashion capital of the world.
“The fact that Amber, Isabeau and Alysa all made the Olympic team was, I mean, we were hoping obviously, but it’s kind of crazy that it actually happened,” said McKinnon, whose 2026 Olympian clients also included U.S. ice dancers Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko. “We’ve had, you know, one or so, but not the sweep, And they’re so cute together. They’re adorable the three of them. So, it just makes it extra special because everyone loves them.’”
But also adds extra pressure.
Entering the season as the designer for multiple Olympic-caliber athletes on the same team creates a need for variation that, McKinnon says, enhances their individuality and compliments their personalities.
“I need to try to make sure that they keep their unique styles,” she said. “And those three women are so different from one another that they all have their own styles. So, it’s important that I don’t create costumes for them that look alike. That’s not good. So, it’s a lot of pressure to not only do the best costume ever for each of them, but to make sure that they are all individually representing themselves and what they do and that it doesn’t necessarily immediately scream that they are all from the same designer.”
She helps “The Blade Angels” – as the triumvirate of Glenn, Levito and Liu is being called – look angelic.
Glenn, a 26-year-old Texas native who in 2019 publicly came out as bisexual and pansexual, is comfortable deviating from traditional attire, saying she will wear whatever the story calls for without hesitation.
“For Amber, this year was totally about embracing her maturity,” McKinnon said. “She’s come so far when it comes to finding herself and how she wants to live her life and who she wants to be when she goes out on the ice.”
Levito, an 18-year-old who was born in Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey, enjoys portraying characters on the ice and has been described as a figure skating showgirl. Her short program this year, for which she wears an elegant red dress while skating to a Sophia Loren medley, followed a “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” design that replicated Audrey Heburn’s iconic black dress with white pearls.
“Her style is very balletic,” McKinnon said. “We can’t drown her in a costume that’s full of detailing … All that has to be minimalistic, in a way, but just enough to enhance her beautiful posture and her body and the way that she skates.”
Liu, a 20-year-old from California who won her first U.S. title at the age of 13, helped the U.S. capture a bronze medal in the team event at the 2022 Beijing Games. Shortly after, she announced her retirement at just 16 years old. She returned in 2024 under her own terms, taking a more hands-on philosophy for her style and costumes.
“She had a more modern approach, in a way where she was like, ‘I don’t give a damn about what people think or this and that. I want this!’” McKinnon said. “So, then it would be all, like, how can we make’ I want this’ into something that actually works also on the ice in front of people?”
Liu, for her free skate, debuted a Lady Gaga inspired costume – along with halo hair. The dress had a mix of crystals, pearls, spikes, payettes and other embellishments that created a unique texture for the ice.
But when she takes the ice in Milan, she’ll be debuting two new dresses – changing her short program music and costume after the artist of the song she planned to use was involved in an investigation and then scrapping her Lady Gaga routine after Nationals for her previous Donna Summer “MacArthur Park” free skate.
With only a few weeks before the Olympics, it was time to design a new dress, which McKinnon said from initial sketches to finished product for elite skaters can take anywhere from a combined 60 to 100 hours and cost up to $8,000.
“When Alysa calls,” she said, “you just don’t say no.”
‘Very much a dream come true’
McKinnon is far more familiar with the word “go.”
Born and raised in Mariestad, Sweden, she began skating when she was just four-years-old.
“I grew up in a small town in Sweden,” she said. “And so, you put your kids in skates and say, ‘Go!’”
She hasn’t stopped since. After seeing a “Holiday on Ice” show in Stockholm, she began dreaming of one day getting hired by a touring ice show. Around the age of 11, she also began to make her own practice outfits, and five years later was making costumes for other skaters.
Her two passions weaved together, showing her that figure skating and fashion are cut from the same cloth.
She went on the road with different touring companies for 16 years, advancing from skater to performance director. During her time off, she’d make costumes.
McKinnon later worked in the costume department with two different Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas and served as assistant costume designer for “Barbie LIVE” the musical. She became costume supervisor for the Wallis Annenberg Center of the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.
“Some friends of mine that were now coaching called me and said, ‘Hey, could you just make one costume for my student?’ And then it just snowballed from there. Then finally I was like, ‘You know what? I really enjoy it. I know I’m good at it. It seems like there’s enough demand to actually have a business here.’”
She launched Lisa McKinnon Designs. McKinnon quickly attracted elite skaters, including Karen Chen and Ashley Wagner when they placed first and second respectively at the 2017 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
“So,” McKinnon said, “I got a bit of attention after that.”
She dressed Olympic gold-medalists at the 2018 Pyeong Chang Games when Germany’s Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot wore her costumes while setting a world record in the pairs free skate.
“It felt sort of unreal,” McKinnon said of her costumes being part of a gold-medal winning performance. “I know that we made them. They were in our hands. But it was very much a dream come true.”
She now dreams of further expanding her business off the ice by going further into bridal and evening wear, similar to that of Vera Wang, whom she calls a role model. Wang was a figure skater with Olympic dreams before she became a global fashion icon, who for decades has also designed figure skating costumes.
“I want to say that I’m trying to follow in her footsteps,” McKinnon said. “She’s a huge inspiration for me.”
U.S. figure skater Amber Glenn remembers the first time she skated after coming out.
McKinnon was also inspired by, and a fan of, Madonna.
“Absolutely!” she said. “That’s my genre. That’s my era.”
She listened to “Like a Prayer” more than most over the last year or so while designing for and watching Glenn, and she hopes the next time she hears it is during an Olympic-medal winning performance — which McKinnon and her team plan to watch together in Los Angeles.
“I get so nervous when they’re about to skate and you just never really know how it’s going to go,” she said. “It’s either we’re so excited or we’re so sad for them. So, yeah, I go through it all. Lots of tears. Happy tears. Sad tears.”
Glenn will soon step back onto the grandest stage in sports. The world, and perhaps even Madonna herself, will be watching as she skates in the dress McKinnon created after putting on her headphones and hitting repeat.
“I don’t know how much skating Madonna watches, but I think she would love that dress,” McKinnon said.
“I hope that she would, and that she would feel honored that somebody wants to skate to her song, and that we did a good job representing her.”
