No Exposed Ankles Allowed: Alysa Liu Brings Her On-Ice Discipline to Airport Style

Alysa Liu has one non-negotiable rule for airport outfits: no exposed ankles. It sounds like the kind of tip you'd find on a style blogger's feed, but coming from a 20-year-old Olympic gold medalist, it carries a different weight—the logic of an athlete whose body needs to stay ready to move, stay warm, stay unrestricted. That means full-coverage sneakers, never slides that leave the ankle bare. It's the same mindset she brings to the ice, just applied to getting dressed.

Liu is from the Bay Area and started skating at age five. At 12, she became the youngest woman ever to land a triple Axel; at 13, she became the youngest U.S. national champion in history. Beijing 2022 was her first Olympics, but that same year, at just 16, she announced she was stepping away from the sport to focus on her mental health. That break lasted until 2025, when she returned to competition—on her own terms, overseeing every detail of her costumes, music selection, and choreography herself. That comeback culminated in her first Olympic gold medal at the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics.

That return is part of what's landed her among Nike's newest roster of athletes, alongside names like Jazzy Davidson, Sha'Carri Richardson, Moses Itauma, and siblings Lauren James and Reece James, all featured in campaign imagery for Nike's Studio Fleece collection. Liu's shots break from typical athlete imagery entirely—she's placed in a pastel-toned salon setting, surrounded by a mixed group all sporting the same streaked hair color as her, dressed in matching Fleece pieces, the whole scene tinged with a slightly surreal quality. Nike apparel designer Claire Durfee explained the collection's focus was on "recalibrating proportions, materials, and details to build a Fleece system that feels more considered and more versatile."

In interviews, Liu is refreshingly direct about how she approaches getting dressed: "My style is very personal to me." Growing up in Oakland, she says, "you're encouraged to have your own way of dressing, you're free to express yourself." That philosophy shows up in her everyday pieces—oversized hoodies she can drape over her legs when it's cold, sweatpants she can't choose between in black or gray so she just wears both, and a layering trick where a vest goes over a T-shirt goes over a hoodie, letting the T-shirt hem peek out intentionally, or a hint of color from a base layer show at the edge of her sweatpants for added dimension. She describes her everyday approach as prioritizing comfort—but it always has to look good, too—with mobility as the top priority. That's exactly why the Studio Fleece shows up in every corner of her life: at home, in dance rehearsals as she works out choreography, and even during on-ice training.

Off the clock, her life looks pretty ordinary: sunset hikes with friends, photos of her cat, flipping through Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted. These everyday moments, paired with her pursuit of technical perfection on the ice, are what complete the picture of what she means when she calls her style "very personal."