Music, style guide costume designer

The best skating costumes blend seamlessly with the skaters’ movements and music.

The worst bunch, gape, shock and stand out like Icelandic singer Bjork’s white swan get-up at the Oscars.

And though some figure skaters always seem to hit the right tone, others seem to continually lay eggs on the ice.

It’s up to designers like Spokane’s Linda Graff and Issaquah’s Lauren Sheehan to steer skaters in the right direction.

Graff, who has been designing skating outfits for 12 years, outfitted local skater Kim Ryan, who finished 14th in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 2002.

Sheehan has designed for skaters Kristi Yamaguchi and Tara Lipinski.

The dress Lipinski wore when she won gold at the 1998 Olympics is a Sheehan creation. It’s currently on display with the medal at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

The world of dressing skaters involves things most tailors and seamstresses rarely employ, like matching panties, illusion fabric that looks like nude pantyhose holding the structure of the dress together, and lots and lots of beads.

Graff, who owns A Sewing Shoppe on Spokane’s South Hill, got into the business at the request of a skating coach at Eagles Ice-A-Rena.

“It’s my favorite creative outlet,” she said. “I’ve been very fortunate to work with coaches who were very visionary.”

Graff often spends days reflecting on a skater’s chosen music before designing the costume.

She frequently colors dresses with airbrushed paint and decorates them with European crystals. Graff isn’t a fan of costumes with too much exposed flesh or too many embellishments.

“If it’s too distracting, they won’t like it,” she says of skating judges.

One simple costume she created was designed to accompany music from the movie “Schindler’s List.” Its subdued, gray fabric was slashed through with a strip of red, representing the blood of those killed during the Holocaust. Another had some thick fringe and was painted to look like leather to invoke a Native American theme.

Sheehan’s mother is from the Spokane area. The skating costume designer is in town this week for the championships.

“Skating is one of those sports where you’re out there with everything showing,” Sheehan said of the importance of getting costuming right.

Getting a dress onto the national or world stage like the U.S. Figure Skating Championships or Olympics is like landing an appearance on the Academy Awards red carpet.

Sheehan’s first Olympic gold experience came when Yamaguchi won in Albertville, France, in 1992.

“It’s kind of living vicariously through them,” Sheehan said of Yamaguchi and Lipinski. “But I was a skater and wanted to go to the Olympics so it’s also a little painful.”

Skating costumes can be expensive, topping $2,000 for some of the leading designers. Elite fashion names like Vera Wang, once a skater herself, command much, much more than that.

Graff charges a minimum $350 to design and make an outfit. Sheehan charged a $1,500 minimum before temporarily retiring in 1998. She’s now working on developing a less expensive line of ready-made dresses in addition to pricier custom work.

But whether a dress is made by a designer or a devoted mom, the most important component is the skater, said Sheehan. “Any costume looks better when it’s nailing a clean program.”