Hirotaka Inoue Calls Designing Alysa Liu's Olympic Earrings Humbling and Joyful

Tokyo-based jeweler Hirotaka Inoue said watching Alysa Liu wear his Dune and Spear earrings during her medal-winning performances at the Milan Cortina Winter Games felt deeply personal. “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,” Inoue said, noting the pieces were visible on and off the ice and on the Olympic podium in Italy.

Inoue described how the small-scale movement of earrings held up on a world stage: “What touched me most was not only the scale of the stage, but how naturally the pieces became part of her presence. They did not overpower her. They moved with her. In that sense, it felt like the jewelry had found the right person.” The designer framed the Dune and Spear styles within his broader approach: “Our pieces are designed to evolve with the wearer, to be collected, layered, and reinterpreted over time.”

The jewelry joined a deliberately theatrical costume package. Designer Lisa McKinnon of Lisa McKinnon Designs 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 as “dripping in gold.” McKinnon recounted choosing to “do gold all the way” for the program set to Donna Summer’s MacArthur Park; seamstresses Sydney Pigott and Kayla Anderson helped realize the look, with Pigott saying, “It's just amazing,” and Anderson saying 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.”

Alysa Liu’s own remarks captured the intensity and relief of the moment. In a post-competition interview transcript provided from on-camera remarks, Liu said verbatim, “I just skated my life like out right now.” The transcript contains misspellings and unclear segments (the athlete’s name appears as “Alyssa Leu” in places), and it includes an ambiguous exchange in which Liu says, “Yeah, I did. So, this is the one that broke. They gave me a whole new one. >> Wow. >> I I've dropped it since though.” The transcript does not explicitly identify the object she references as having “broke.”

The convergence of costume, music, and jewelry helped define Liu’s Olympic image: McKinnon’s gold dress and Hirotaka’s Dune and Spear earrings were present as Liu performed to the extended Donna Summer arrangement and accepted her gold medal on the podium. Inoue summed up the moment and his role plainly: “As a designer, you hope your work will accompany important moments in people’s lives. Seeing it on the world stage, carried by someone with such grace and strength, was both humbling and joyful.”

Photographs from the event carry the credit line used by the designer’s team: “Top: Alysa Liu wore Hirotaka’s Spear and Dune earrings when she skated to gold at the recent Winter Olympics in Italy. (Photo by Aflo; all photos courtesy of Hirotaka).”