Haiti’s Winter Olympic Uniforms Are Breaking The Internet

When I think of Haiti, winter is the last thing to come to mind. Nevertheless, two skiers, Richardson Viano and Stevenson Savart, are competing in the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games. Haiti has a brief history in the Winter Olympics, with it being four years since Viano became the first athlete to compete in the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. So designer Stella Jean’s uniform designs for the athletes had to make a powerful statement.  

This isn’t Jean’s first time designing Haiti’s Olympic uniforms. The Italian designer with Haitian roots on her maternal side was commissioned by the Haitian Olympic Committee general director, Patrick Blanchet, for the 2024 Paris Olympics to create uniforms that convey Haiti’s resilience. This year is no exception. Jean’s designs have gone viral online, with many Haitians expressing their pride. 

“Haiti’s presence at the Winter Olympics is a symbol, it is a statement, not a coincidence,” Haiti’s ambassador to Italy, Gandy Thomas, expressed in an interview with the AP. “We may not be a winter country, but we are a nation that refuses to be confined by expectation. Absence is the most dangerous form of erasing.”

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Originally, her design featured revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, who led Haiti to becoming the first Black republic in 1804. However, the International Olympic Committee barred Jean and her team from using the image due to it violating the IOC’s rules of remaining neutral on political, religious, or racial symbolism. With that information, Jean pivoted and still created a uniform worth the praise it’s receiving. 

While Louverture is not pictured in this rendition of the uniform, she derived inspiration from Édouard Duval-Carrié’s painting of him riding a red horse to victory. To resolve the IOC’s violation issue, she appointed Italian artisans to paint out the political figure. Both athletes, Viano and Stevenson, were pictured at the Haitian Embassy in Rome wearing jackets with a riderless red horse encompassed by the tropical nature of Haiti and its clear blue sky, with the Haitian Coat of Arms on the chest. For the women in the delegation, a puffer skirt with the same red horse is included, with a zip-up jacket and a tignon or headwrap in a green tropical print. This image serves as a reminder that the erasure of Haiti is impossible, and the essence of resilience and overcoming, rooted in the country, will always be visible. 

“Rules are rules and must be respected, and that is what we have done,” Jean said in a statement to AP.  “But for us, it is important that this horse, his horse, the general’s horse, remains. It remains the symbol of Haiti’s presence at the Olympics.” While the political unrest and uncertainty in Haiti have been difficult to overcome, from the earthquake in 2010 to the assassination of its president Jovenel Moïse in 2011, it’s clear that the Haitian Diaspora sees this uniform as evoking a sense of pride for where they come from and what they can overcome. The art on the team’s uniform, even as it pivots from the IOC’s running, represents triumph despite violence, disenfranchisement, and unpredictability. They’re beautifully and tactfully intentional. 

TOPICS:  Haiti Olympics

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