Ok anyway, I have looked through some costumes I have collected throughout the decade and there are not really any recurring themes like we have seen throughout the 80s and 90s. The 2000s costume motto seemed to fit 2 themes: 1) Suiting the program, or 2) Suiting the skaters' personal style. I'm going to break this one out by discipline, and you can see what I'm talking about.
In some of my previous posts, I wrote about how skating costumes reflected popular styles of the time period. I suppose we should be grateful this wasn't really the case here. There are no trucker hats or super low rise jeans out there!
Ice Dance
Some of the most cool and creative costumes of the decade came from ice dance.
This team has some cool costumes. It looks like it may be for a tango. I like the design on it. The hair, however, has room for improvement.
Anissina and Peizerat were a French dance team to watch in the late 90s and early 2000s. They always seemed to pick costumes that complemented her fiery red hair and gave him a romantic look.
This yin and yang costume is really unique. I might have to go find this program! It looks pretty cool. And of course, when I look for the program, this has disappeared from the internet forever. Thanks...
Here we have the German dance team Winkler and Lohse on fire! 🔥
Ladies
For the ladies, we see a variety of both classic and modern skating dresses, better suited to the skater and the program. We will start with the podium from the 2002 Olympics:
This was certainly an interesting night. I don't think anyone would have anticipated Sarah Hughes winning the gold. She had a beautiful and perfect free skate, but she was in 4th after the short program. There was a bit of grumbling about the judging and scores, but nothing like other Olympic events (hmm...1998? 2014? yeah, those were much more contested. I will leave out my personal opinions on these for now...😉).
Costume wise, the '00s are when we start seeing sleeveless dresses becoming more of the norm in ladies skating. For this reason, Irina's long sleeve dress stands out a bit more. Here's a closer look at Sarah's dress for her winning free skate.
We also have another dress from another one of Irina's programs:
Well, this is interesting, whatever it is. I like how the skirt is either removable or adjustable. I will have to find this program! It would be super cool if the music was "Ace of Spades" by Motorhead, but somehow I doubt that's the case.
Another noteworthy difference with the ladies of all disciplines in this decade is the much greater usage of over the boot tights. There are skaters and non-skaters alike who either love or hate these tights. I'm much more of a "live and let live" type of person with the tights. I will say over the boot tights are helpful for keeping laces tucked in, and also covering up less-than-perfect boots (as mine are at the moment...once I get new skates I will be showing those babies off though!).
Back to the dresses...
After the 2002 Olympics, some new skaters to came into play. Team USA's biggest medal contender in ladies' figure skating was Sasha Cohen. Sasha had a dramatic flair, and she could pull off costumes and programs of all different styles.
We also have this costume from one of her exhibitions, and it's one of the prettiest costumes ever:
She won the silver at the 2006 Olympics, and the gold went to Shizuka Arakawa of Japan.
Her dress is really pretty and unique, with the sleeves of different colors, neckline, and skirt cut. After the 2006 Olympics, several of the skaters did not compete at the world championships. This was when Kimmie Meissner stepped in and won Worlds seemingly out of nowhere.
Red and gold is a nice combination, as we are seeing on Nathan Chen's costume this season.
To sum up the ladies, there were a lot of pretty dresses, nothing crazy, but nothing that really says, wow! The one exception would be Sasha's winged costume, which was for an exhibition. Here it is. You have to see the wings move!
This is just gorgeous, especially on the spirals, OMG!!!
Pairs
Here we have the 2006 Olympic Silver Medalists Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao. Their costumes are somewhat similar to one of the the dance teams above.
Next, we have Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman in matching pale blue ensembles.
And finally, I must feature both pairs from the 2002 Olympic Showdown and judging scandal:
First is Sale and Pelletier of Canada:
Fairly simple costuming, so more focus goes on their skating.
And we have their opponents, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze of Russia:
A little more elaborate, but still fairly simple costuming. I'm only focusing on costumes for this post, but I have addressed this judging scandal in a recent post on the state of our sport. It may even come up again once I nail down my favorite pairs programs for the Top Ten Pairs' post.
Moving on to our final category...
Men
To start off, we have a few more traditional offerings from Timothy Goebel and Michael Weiss:
We also have Johnny Weir looking unlike his usual fabulous self:
This looks to be earlier in his career, but it's so unusual to see him without the flash and frippery.
We also have an interesting and striking choice from Brian Joubert:
Now things are really gonna get interesting...The huge rivalry in men's figure skating in the '00s was between two Russian men: Alexei Yagudin and Evgeny Plushenko. It was not just a friendly skating rivalry either. They really did not like each other and everyone knew it. Alexei especially got ugly after Plushenko got injured at the 2014 Olympics and withdrew before the short program. Yikes! Anyway, here they are, so let's talk costumes!
Here's Plushenko. He won the gold in 2006. The detailing here kind of reminds me of Yuri's Eros costume from Yuri on Ice:
And here's Alexei Yagudin. He won the gold in 2002.
Seeing these immediately brings this to mind:
I'm so very sorry to do this to you again. I know many of you were just now recovering from seeing this the first time. Anyway, Alexei's first costume is a hot mess, though still an improvement on our poor violin girl. It could have been featured in my Worst Costumes post. I might need to do a Part 2 on that one. Anyway, Alexei's second costume is much more classy and refined.
Speaking of worst costumes, I have had several people comment on this one from Stephane Lambiel:
1) I like animal print.
2) Stephane is awesome.
3) The zebra print looked really cool with the spins.
It appears we all have our blind spots with certain costumes, skaters and designs. This was one of mine.
Come to think of it, isn't "The More You Know" an '00s thing as well?
Anyway y'all, we are almost at the end of this series! There is but one more from the 2010s, which I keep tweaking from recent competitions. There is a lot more cool stuff coming you way too!
Thank you from Icy Trails ⛸
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