Hirotaka Calls Designing Alysa Liu’s Olympic Earrings Humbling and Joyful

Alysa Liu’s gold-medal skate at the Milan Cortina Winter Games was not only a victory on the ice but a moment of visibility for jewelry designed to live close to the body. The 20-year-old champion wore Tokyo-based jeweler Hirotaka Inoue’s Dune and Spear earrings on and off the ice all the way up to the Games, and Inoue said seeing his work carried on the world stage was “both humbling and joyful.”

The earrings were visible during Liu’s medal-winning free skate to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” and again on the Olympic podium, images credited as Photo by Aflo; photos courtesy of Hirotaka. Inoue reflected on the fit between object and athlete, saying, “They did not overpower her. They moved with her. In that sense, it felt like the jewelry had found the right person.” He emphasized the intimacy of adornment: “Jewelry is something very intimate. It lives close to the body, so seeing a piece worn at such a powerful and visible moment felt incredibly meaningful.”

Design intent informed the pairing. Inoue described his pieces as built to evolve with wearers: “Our pieces are designed to evolve with the wearer, to be collected, layered, and reinterpreted over time.” The comment frames the Dune and Spear not as costume trinkets but as adaptable components of a personal collection that can travel from rehearsal to competition to podium.

Liu’s look was a collaboration. Costume designer Lisa McKinnon spent more than 100 hours designing, sewing, and hand-placing beading on Liu’s gold dress, which McKinnon described as “flirty fun, but at the same time, classically beautiful with a hint of disco and then just kind of dripping in gold.” McKinnon said, “It feels incredible to be a small part of the history that Alysa has made now,” and recounted the studio approach: “We just went straight for it. Like, let's do gold all the way.” Members of her team shared the moment: seamstress Sydney Pigott called it “It's just amazing,” and head patterner Kayla Anderson said she was “excited that we were all coming together to make something that would make her feel good and make her look like a million bucks.”

Personal style details punctuated the win. Liu has a smiley piercing through the frenulum that was visible when she bit her medal; she told TMJ4 News she got the piercing about two years earlier and said, “I did it myself,” with her sister helping to hold up her lip. She also maintains an evolving hair motif of annual rings, adding one each year since 2023 and wearing three rings at the Games, and told NBC she visited a salon in St. Louis to shift gingery tones toward a milk tea blonde, a request that stylist Miller described as “shocking.”

For designers and collectors alike, the episode underlines how carefully considered accessories can become part of an athlete’s visual signature. As Inoue put it, seeing jewelry “move with her” on the world stage made the work feel at once personal and public, a small object carrying the gravity of a historic American gold—the first in the women's free skate for the United States since 2002.