Suiting Up for Beijing 2022

As the 2022 Winter Olympics draws near, preparations on all fronts are reaching the home stretch. Assigned to design competition uniforms for Team China, Professor Liu Li from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology and her team of experts in realms including ergonomics, fluid mechanics, clothing materials, and industrial design are also making their final push.

Every Millisecond Counts

China was a late starter in terms of winter sports technology research, especially work related to sports clothing. However, since 2018, the Winter Sports Suits and Equipment R&D Center, headed by Professor Liu, has achieved successive innovations in materials, safety, warmth retention and design of Team China’s uniforms for the upcoming Winter Olympics, with focus on both practicality and aesthetics.

Sports suits for speed racers are designed to be “fast,” while figure skating suits seek to display Chinese beauty. Both also need to keep the competitor warm. “Every millisecond counts for speed racing events such as short-track speed skating and alpine skiing,” said Professor Liu. “By analyzing changes in human skin in the process of competition, we tailor customized one-piece suits for athletes to maximally decrease air resistance so that they can move as fast as possible.”

By harnessing increasingly optimized materials and structures at wind speed of 32 meters per second, the competition suit for alpine downhill skiing reached air resistance reduction capacity four percent higher than its international counterparts. The final product to be used by Team China at the Winter Olympics will even have a greater capacity to reduce air resistance.

“Downhill skiers can reach a speed of 160 kilometers per hour, faster than most cars,” noted assistant researcher Zhang Mingwen. “Competitors must pass through ski gates. Falls can cause severe injuries, so protective devices are crucial.” The alpine ski suits design team used a new cylindrically arrayed anti-shock structure and energy-absorbing materials to effectively protect skiers. Suits for short-track speed skating used anti-cutting fabrics to better protect athletes.

Warmth retention is a common requirement for winter sports clothes. The sports suits designed by the team are windproof, waterproof, wear-resistant, and air-permeable, and will stay warm even when the temperature drops to minus 30 degrees Celsius. They can protect athletes even from extreme cold.

Every Suit Is Unique

This wasn’t Professor Liu’s first crack at designing winter sports suits. In April 2018, her team first started working with the Chinese figure skating team. Figure skating suits they designed for the 2019-2021 competition seasons are now on display in the first-floor exhibition hall of Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology. Each suit was tailored to conform to their wearers’ respective musical theme, choreography, somatotype, and even character and habits. “Every suit is unique and has its own individuality,” declared chief designer Zhao Yajie.

“Sports suits are an athlete’s armor,” illustrated Professor Liu. “A fitted, comfortable suit can help athletes enhance their confidence and sharpen their edge in races.” To produce competition suits integrating practicality and aesthetics, her team often worked late into the night, ironing out details.

A fitted suit relies on accurate measurements of its wearer’s body size. To this end, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology conducted 3D scanning of every athlete on Team China and set up an ergonomic database. It also invited athletes, in-service or retired, to simulate speed skating movements with the help of digital image processing technology. With the acquired data, it then designed customized suits for the Winter Olympics.

Telling Chinese Stories

In 2019, the figure skating outfits designed by Professor Liu’s team were honored with the Best Costume award from Golden Skate, an international resource site and discussion board dedicated to the sport of figure skating.

“In the past, the Chinese figure skating team ordered competition costumes from abroad, which was not only time-consuming but also resulting in ill-fitted garments because foreign designers don’t cater to Chinese athletes’ physiques and habits,” explained Professor Liu. “Our design team turned everything around. Furthermore, we use traditional Chinese techniques such as dyeing and embroidery to add Chinese cultural elements in the costumes, enabling them to tell Chinese stories.”

Many designers see traditional Chinese dyeing techniques and cultural elements as a “gold mine” waiting to be explored. “In the last competition season, Chinese figure skating duo Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, who have won gold medals at many international events, chose to perform accompanied by A Sword in Ten Steps, a song composed by Tan Dun for the movie Hero,” recalled Zhao Yajie. To design suitable costumes for them, the team combed through many reference books on the ancient clothes from the Qin and Zhao states during the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.) and drew inspiration from calligraphy and wash-and-ink painting displayed in the movie.

“In the design process, we adopted traditional Chinese tie-dyeing technique to recreate the fade-in and fade-out effects of wash-and-ink painting, which imbued the costumes with the radiance of Chinese culture,” Zhao added.

Zhao and her colleagues believe Chinese designers should learn from foreign innovation capacity and unlimited imagination. “As our understanding of figure skating deepens, we’re becoming more confident in designing costumes.”