As the USA women’s gymnastics team dons the stripes and stars at the 2024 Summer Olympics, one Cornell alum is helping them sparkle.
Jeanne Diaz ’10 designed the uniforms the gymnasts are competing in in Paris, France, incorporating more than 47,000 Swarovski crystals across each athlete’s eight-leotard set.
A College of Human Ecology alum, Diaz is now the design director at Elite Sportswear, the official outfitter for Team USA Gymnastics since 2000. They have designed and manufactured the leotards for the last six Olympics. In addition to the United States, GK Elite has outfitted other nations in the past, including the Netherlands, Canada, Mexico and Colombia.
Though the games began in late July, the design and production process for the leotards started long before 2024.
“We start the ideation process two years in advance,” Diaz said. “We start with an athlete survey and just get an idea of what they’re wanting to see in their leotards.”
The creative team also considers the culture and location of where the games will take place. This year’s games are in Paris — a city that last hosted the Olympics a century ago, in 1924.
“My team went ahead and created mood boards,” Diaz said. “Our goal was to merge Parisian couture, Parisian art [and Parisian] architecture and fuse that with iconic Americana — two things that are pretty different.”
Diaz said that it can be challenging to combine aspects of two separate cultures into one design.
“How do we merge those two things into a collection that is really cohesive and beautiful?” Diaz said. “That’s really why it takes two years to make sure that this collection we’re putting out there is a really strong one because it’s the world’s biggest stage. And especially this Olympics because of Simone Biles, all eyes are going to be on gymnastics.” Read more here.