Figure Skating Costumes Through the Years: The 70s!

Welcome back to the "Figure Skating Costumes Through the Years" series! We are now on the 70s. As we have seen before, there is not an exact correlation to pop culture fashion and skating fashion, but pop culture does have an influence. There are a few common themes that run across the entire decade. Skirts on ladies dresses remain short. The early 70s costumes for men and women still carry some of the same themes we saw in the late 60s: high necklines for women and tailored suit looks for men. Throughout the decade, we start to see the necklines drop and the men's looks become less formal. There are a lot of flared sleeves, and stretchy fabrics are starting to come out for figure skating costumes. I'm sure this was a relief to many skaters. A reader commented on one of my last posts about getting fitted for costumes in the 60s and how much of a pain that was. And the dresses were made of wool! That would have been a no-go for me with my wool allergy. Another thing to note is that pairs skaters are beginning to wear matching costumes. This has not been the case in previous decade. What I find most fascinating about the 70s is that skaters began to develop their own personal style. Let's get some pictures out here, shall we?

In the 70s, the American ladies did very well. We had 2 beautiful and graceful skaters with iconic bob haircuts. Our 1972 Olympic Silver Medalist is Janet Lynn.

1972 was a highly contested Olympics that forever changed the sport. I will write more on that later, but to summarize, Janet Lynn performed a brilliant free skate, but did not do as well in compulsory figures as gold medalist Trixie Schuba. There were a lot of disagreements on this. 

So, back to the costumes. Janet Lynn's signature style was a simple, long sleeved dress in a beautiful color. Here are some more photos:

Trixie Schuba had her own personal style too. Her M.O. was a black dress with blingy details, as seen above and in this picture below:

In 1976, Dorothy Hamill took home the gold medal. Her haircut inspired many teenage girls at the time. Her dress style was a long sleeve dress with a short skirt, and a lower V neckline with some embellishment.

Her autobiography is awesome, btw, if you haven't checked it out. I will have to write a post on skating books...

For the men, British and Canadian skaters rose in fame. Toller Cranston of Canada won the bronze medal in 1972 and John Curry of Great Britain took home the gold in 1976. The reason I featured these two men is because their skating is very different. Cranston was more of a comical skater and Curry was more of an artist. Both men left a huge mark on the sport. Toller was more of a chameleon with his style choices, and John had a signature look.

Toller Cranston

John Curry

With John Curry's costumes, all were form fitting and close to the body. In his iconic Don Quixote performance, he wore a shirt with puffed sleeves and a vest. He appears to have had a little more fun with the exhibition costumes, which were stretchy jumpsuits in a variety of colors.

Now on to another big shift: Pairs costumes. In our previous posts, the men typically wore a black suit or something very simple, whereas the lady wore a colorful and pretty dress. Now, we see pairs teams coordinating in costumes. In 1976, ice dancing was introduced to the Olympics, and they also joined in on the pairs bandwagon. Here are the first ice dance Olympic Gold Medalists, Ludmilla Pakhoma and Alexandr Gorshkov.

They have some nice emerald green ensembles, and his green tuxedo is especially dapper. For a large part of the 70s, the Russian retained hold of their dominance in pairs skating. Here are Irina Rodnina and Andrei Zaitsev, also in matching costumes.

Later in the decade, the Russians received a strong challenge from an American Pairs team: Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner.

The next picture is from the 1979 World Championships, where they skated a wonderful and exciting performance that earned them the world title.

The rainbow pattern and the skirt look very 70s to me. I think my mom used to have something with rainbows on it too.

As you can see, there are some big changes that happened in the 70s in the world of figure skating costumes! Hope y'all enjoyed it. I hope to get out at least one post on this Thanksgiving week.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

💙 Icy Trails