READING, Pa. — From the outside, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about it: a squat, boxy, gray building on the outskirts of an industrial city.
But behind the unassuming exterior lies a house of glitter: It’s where humming sewing machines, hundreds of fabrics, and millions of crystals come together to create the costumes for this year’s U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.
Walk into GK Elite’s headquarters, about 90 minutes northwest of Philadelphia, and you’re greeted by floor-to-ceiling photos of Olympic medalists and mannequins dressed in iconic leotards, like the navy blue leotard with glittering white sleeves that Suni Lee wore when she won the all-around gold medal in Tokyo. Peek into the conference rooms and you’ll find memorabilia ranging from a box of Wheaties signed by 2008 Olympic all-around winner Nastia Liukin to a signed Time cover by Simone Biles.
It’s part museum, but primarily a manufacturing facility — where the dazzling leotards that Biles, Lee, Jordan Childs, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera will wear later this month are born, from the first design sketches to the final hand-placed stones.
GK Elite unveiled its eight women’s Olympic leotards Wednesday, adorned with Swarovski crystals in patriotic hues. Drawing inspiration from American iconography, French art and even Old Hollywood, the outfits are ultimately about more than aesthetics. Gymnasts have long worn leotards to add an extra layer of individuality and boost their confidence on the field, and each leotard they’ll take to Paris tells its own story.
For Carey, seeing her Olympic costume the day after the U.S. Trials enhanced the experience of making her first Olympic team. She qualified for Tokyo as an individual athlete, winning gold on floor exercise but not on the four-person team that won silver. In Paris, she’ll have a chance to help the U.S. win another medal in the team event.
“I felt like I was part of the Olympic team. As soon as the preliminaries were over, it was all over and I saw the leotard and I felt like I was officially part of the team,” she said. “I was really excited to put the leotard on and I’m really proud to represent Team USA again.”
The process of getting the leotards from a Pennsylvania factory to Paris began two years ago, when GK’s design director, Jeanne Diaz, and her team (who also designed the U.S. National Team costumes for Tokyo 2021) began putting together mood boards of imagery from high-fashion runways and museums for inspiration for 2022. They looked to Paris for reference, but also aimed to create costumes that were “unmistakably U.S. National Team,” Diaz said.
The leotards worn by the athletes in the team finals stand out as a highlight. GK’s goal was to recreate the feeling of athletes being engulfed in the American flag after a victory, an Olympic tradition. The leotard features navy sleeves covered in crystal-edged stars and a white bodice accented with red stripes. Many of the 9,929 crystals on the leotard are diamond-shaped.
“That’s something you really think about in track and field, and in swimming and gymnastics too, when you receive the flag from someone in the stands and then you wrap it around yourself,” Diaz said. “That’s a really special, emotional moment, and we wanted to capture that with the leotards.”
The design also pays homage to the “Magnificent Seven,” the first U.S. women’s gymnastics team to win a gold medal at the 1996 Games. Diaz said GK focused on modernity to avoid simply reusing previous designs.
“We took the graphic and made it feel like a digital interpretation of the flag, cutting the lines in an organized way, combining thick and thin lines to give the athletes a special moment where they can see all the really cool details.”
For the heats and individual finals, athletes can choose from seven other leotards.
From left: The team’s finals outfit, which will feature an American flag theme, an all-blue superhero look and a greyscale star-focused design. (Courtesy of GK Elite)
GK designed another version, a blue leotard covered in more than 10,000 crystals. Most of the stones are on the bodice, whose shape is inspired by corsets and reminiscent of superhero armor, Diaz says. The glittering stars and angular lines on the sleeves are an abstract representation of the stars and stripes of the American flag.
The other version stands out as the only Olympic leotard that isn’t red, white and blue. From a distance, the gunmetal grey leotard appears to feature large stars that run from the waist to the collar and sleeves. But look closer and you’ll see that the stars are empty spaces between multicoloured dots and crystals in garnet, periwinkle, turquoise and gold. The dots are a homage to French artist Georges Seurat, who invented the painting technique known as pointillism. Touches of velvet that accentuate the collar, waistline and crisscross straps at the back were added at the athlete’s suggestion.
While gymnasts can design their own looks for national competitions like the U.S. Championships, they typically have little say in the secretive Olympic designs. The request for velvet came from a survey GK sent to national team members, who said they liked the material but only wore it in small amounts because it could make them feel hot.
Three of the leotards take inspiration from both the fleur-de-lis symbol, traditionally associated with the French crown, and old Hollywood style. (Courtesy of GK Elite)
Another three-piece leotard set features curvaceous lines and a crystal motif reminiscent of fleur-de-lis.
“It takes a lot of inspiration from French haute couture and art nouveau, but it also has an American connection through the glamour of old Hollywood from the 1920s,” Diaz said.
Highlighting this part of the Olympic outfit is a plain white leotard with an intricate, cage-like bodice with a crystal design, delicate sleeves reminiscent of French lace and 970 white pearls scattered among the crystals. A lace-up design on the back adds a pop of color with crisscrossing straps in navy, maroon and white.
Left: The striped blue leotard evokes a fireworks explosion. Right: The all-red version was created at the request of USA Gymnastics. (Courtesy of GK Elite)
USA Gymnastics specifically requested a bright red leotard, so Diaz’s team developed an asymmetrical design with mesh sleeves and stretchy satin fabric that GK dyed specially for the Olympics. It also has a keyhole cutout in the back and a high neck. The final of the eight leotards is a dark blue leotard with mesh sleeves and a firework-like explosion of crystals radiating from the right shoulder. The fabric is also printed with the same patriotic fireworks.
Once USA Gymnastics approved the mock-up, production began in Reading, including pattern making, fabric selection and cutting. The uniforms were custom-fitted to the athletes’ measurements, and GK produced 22 sets of the Olympic Collection to cover every member of the national team (with a few extras, just in case).
On the factory floor, various prints were sublimated onto cut pieces of fabric, pasted under an embroidery machine, and two logos were quickly sewn on: the GK logo on the left hip and the USA logo on the right hip.
Across the room, a machine that could place up to 170 stones a minute kept supplying the crystals. A small robotic arm picked up each gem from the pile and handed it to an even smaller arm, which imprinted the intricate pattern onto transfer paper, which was pressed onto a section of a leotard and inserted into a heat-transfer machine, bonding the crystals to the fabric.
Additional stones were added using a laser system and a foot pedal operated by a GK employee, who moved the fabric and stepped on it with his foot when the red dot was in the correct place for the next stone. Stones that were too large or delicate for the robot to place, such as the large pearl on the pure white leotard, were placed by hand with tweezers. After a quality check, the leotard was ready for sport’s biggest stage.
Each has the potential to become a symbol of Olympic glory, forever linked to a moment broadcast around the world and etched in history.
“I can’t wait for the world to see it,” Carey said.
From left: Jade Carey, Suni Lee, Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Hesley Rivera show off the new leotards that will be worn in the Olympic team final. (Courtesy of GK Elite)
(Top illustration of Simone Biles and Suni Lee in their new leotards: Dan Goldfarb/ Athletic; All images courtesy of GK Elite. Video: Tess DeMeyer)
