Team USA's 2026 Outfits Are Designed to 'Wear Forever'

Ralph Lauren revealed Team USA's Milan Cortina Winter Olympics looks on Thursday, complete with Americana knit sweaters and plenty of vintage callbacks. The formal opening ceremony look pairs a patterned red, white, and blue knit sweater with tailored cream trousers and a matching wool coat. Moving sportier, the closing ceremony outfit features a graphic puffer coat inspired by vintage ski kits over a color-blocked sweater, per the AP.

"We are creating something that we know has to become timeless and has to be something that people will wear forever and appreciate forever," says David Lauren, chief branding and innovation officer at Ralph Lauren. Beyond the ceremony looks, a Team USA collection, which will also be given to athletes as Olympic Village wear, became available to the public on Thursday. The collection follows similar design themes as the opening and closing ceremony looks, with classic red, white, and blue patterning on lots of knits, and includes Ralph Lauren's versions of winter staples like bomber jackets and hockey jerseys.

The process of creating these looks is a long one. The Ralph Lauren team, which has been designing Team USA's Olympic apparel since 2008, starts on each year's looks about 2 1/2 years out from the Games, meeting with athletes and brainstorming ideas for the kits. As 2026's looks are unveiled, Lauren said the looks for the 2028 Los Angeles Games are already months in the making. He knows the cultural importance each Olympics' outfits holds, and the attention they garner in the fashion world and among American consumers. "The fact that we know people will want them and collect them and chase them down across eBay is just an exciting part of the game," he says.

Even international Olympic athletes are on the lookout for them. Beyond being an addition to an American athlete's Olympic wardrobe, the pieces are also sometimes used as bargaining tokens in the Olympic Village. Paralympics snowboarder Brenna Huckaby notes there's a tradition of swapping team sweaters and jackets with other nations at the Olympics—but only if there's a piece of their collection they're willing to let go of. "I rarely trade, because I almost always love every single piece of Team USA stuff," she says. "But every now and then there will be some random thing that another country has."