From designer Vera Wang to a local ice-skating shop, there are many different figure skating outfits in the ice skating world. Michelle Kwan wore an outfit that cost $40,000 for the 2002 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. This dress was created and designed by the world-renowned designer Vera Wang. It was made of crystals and peach colored silk. As you can see, present day ice-skating outfits were probably much different than the past.

Ice-skating started in the 1600s.The first ice-skates were found at the bottom of a lake in Switzerland. They were discovered to be 4,000 years old. The skates were wooden and used to glide across frozen canals. The method they used was called the Dutch Roll. The skates are now in a museum in Berne, Switzerland. In 1865, a man named Jackson Haines developed the two metal plate blades on the bottom of the ice skating “boot”. They use those skates today.

The ice-skating outfits used to be made of wool for practice and made of velvet and silk for performances in 1924. Now we use Lycra and Spandex. As you can see, the outfits have changed very much from the 1600s to the present day figure skating.