The Striking Style Evolution Of Olivia Dunne

At an age when she's barely legal enough to drink alcohol, Olivia Dunne has vaulted into the big-time as a star gymnast, social media influencer, and tabloid attraction, one apparently worth $6 million. Her figure would woo most folks into retirement, but Dunne, a communications major at Louisiana State University, is just getting started. Granted, she's worked hard at school, in her athletic pursuits, and getting her name out there on TikTok et al., a skill that no doubt might have made her an in-class case study among her LSU peers. 

But it's been her videogenic appeal as a talented gymnast that has obviously helped Dunne become one of America's most celebrated "it-girls" of late. It's been enough for tabloids to dedicate media real estate to the goings-on in her life, whether it be gawking at her in public or romantically linking her to the likes of NFL wide receiver Justin Jefferson and country singer Morgan Wallen. These days, she's dating MLB pitcher Paul Skenes.

Just as vital to Dunne's persona has been her keen sense of fashion. "I love fashion design," she says on her website. "I especially enjoy participating in the design of my custom leotards." Outside of her gymnastics attire, Dunne has evolved with her wardrobe, experimenting with casual wear, cutting-edge designs, and outfits that have classiness written all over them. She's jumped back and forth between styles frequently, but one element has remained constant. Whatever she puts on, she's guaranteed to turn heads.

While growing up in New Jersey, Olivia Dunne still has her first memory of what attracted her to gymnastics. It wasn't so much the sport itself, but more about what participants were wearing.  "I was like, 'Mom, I want that,' and she said, 'Well, you can't have a leotard unless you do gymnastics,'" she said to Elle. "So I was like, 'Sign me up.'" It didn't matter how the leotard was cut or what color it was, as long as it sparkled, a fashion infatuation that would stick with her for years.

The look was hardly limited to leotards, as throughout her young years extending into adolescence, she would wear sequined dresses during the Yuletide holidays, and even birthdays, especially her 15th, when she wore a shiny pink number for the occasion. Sometimes, Dunne would go casual, while at more formal functions, she would make sure to dress to the nines, like banquets put on by the Eastern National Academy of Gymnastics, where she excelled, winning championships in nearly every category in which she competed.

Before she made it to Louisiana State University on an athletic scholarship, Dunne shared a pressing issue with her fans on TikTok concerning what to wear: sweatpants or dresses? While her fans seemed to be divided in their preferences, Dunne pretty much had her mind made up by September.

While still in her late teens, Olivia Dunne had already accumulated 100,000 followers on TikTok and had just signed a letter of intent to head to Louisiana State University on a gymnastics scholarship in 2020. She continued to foster that following with regular social media posts while in college, but with attending classes, workouts with the LSU gymnastics team, and more studying to maintain a high grade-point average, there wasn't much time to dress up for a night out. She spent much of her freshman year in more casual attire, even joking at one point on Instagram, "Yes, I am wearing sweatpants in 95-degree weather."

Despite Dunne's online profile and notoriety as a big-time gymnastics up-and comer, she likely went casual for another reason. NCAA rules at the time forbade her from financially leveraging her growing social media stats. If a name-brand company gave Dunne a garment to wear on Instagram, she couldn't accept it. "She came to college with this audience, and for her not to be able to use her own name, image, and likeness because it was wrapped up in these NCAA rules — basically, they owned her — was really unfair," said her mother Kat to Elle. "She couldn't earn a single dollar. The rules were so strict, she couldn't even take a cup of coffee for free."

However, that situation changed shortly after Dunne completed her first year in college.

In June 2021, a couple months before Olivia Dunne was to enter her sophomore year at LSU, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of college athletes who launched an anti-trust lawsuit against the NCAA's strict policy. In response, the association relaxed some of the rules enabling athletes to profit from their names, images, and likenesses (NIL). "Social media is always something that I've loved, and what I think is so great about the NIL rule change is that you can do whatever you love," said Dunne to Forbes shortly after signing a representation agreement with agents WME Sports. 

By September, Dunne already accumulated 5 million social media followers, making her the most popular NCAA athlete online, and she chose sports clothier Vuori as her first sponsor. While the financial details of the deal were not disclosed, the agreement called for Dunne to take part in online and in-person marketing campaigns while she would get to showcase herself in an array of Vuori casual and athletic apparel.

"Fashion has always been a huge passion of mine," said Dunne in a release per Vuori. "Before college, my coach and I would design my own custom leotards for all my major competitions. I love expressing myself through my style and I fell in love with Vuori because I thought their clothes looked and felt amazing. I couldn't be more proud that my first brand partnership is with them."

Shortly after Olivia Dunne's inked signature had dried on her Vuori contract, she landed another deal with American Eagle Outfitters, a company that couldn't wait for the social media and athletic star to wriggle herself into their extensive line of denims. When asked about her wardrobe style late in 2020, she replied on American Eagle's website blog, "Very dressed up or very dressed down. There's no in between. I'm either full glam or super chill." The signing demonstrated that her fashion scales were tipping towards the latter. Her endorsement of the company's denims couldn't have been stronger, when posing in a pair on an Instagram post. "Best jeans ever," she wrote.

American Eagle was chomping at the bit to bring Dunne and other college athletes aboard once the NCAA relaxed its grip on NIL stipulations, and in the process added the likes of UCLA softball shortstop Maya Brady, Sam Houston State cheerleader Jada Wooten, and LSU hurdler Eric Edwards Jr. "We decided, we've got to get in this game and see what this is all about," said Craig Brommers, American Eagle's chief marketing officer, to The Athlete's Bureau, realizing that NCAA luminaries would be a fit with his young demographic. "Around Gen Z, sports remains the number one passion point of this generation. The reality is college sports has allowed us to drive business results. And as long as it continues to do that, we'll continue to invest in it."

If 2022 signified Olivia Dunne's passion for casual wear, the following year launched a greater desire for her to experiment with her wardrobe, adopting a more revealing style. The first public sign that she was opting for a dare-to-bare look took place that year at ESPN's red-carpet ESPY Awards event, where she wore a backless dress. Still, the outfit was pretty innocuous compared to her way of celebrating America's Independence Day a few weeks later. In a TikTok video, Dunne was dressed, sort of, in a white top with jeans unbuttoned and pulled down low enough to reveal a star-spangled bikini bottom, as she declared, "My pronouns are U.S.A!" 

In some regards, it was likely one way that Dunne, by now a millionaire thanks to the rapidly expanding roster of endorsement deals coming her way, was expressing a sense of empowerment. "It's just about showing as much or as little as you want," Dunne said to The New York Times, confirming she was in total control of how she wanted to project herself.

But in a retrospective TikTok entry, Dunne might have regretted wearing a few of those risqué outfits, especially those she sported at Coachella, including a beaded see-through dress that left little to the imagination and a white mesh skirt that harbored no secrets about what she wore underneath. "What I'm taking away from this is that I think I need some Coachella redemption."

Olivia Dunne was certainly turning a lot of heads with more revealing outfits, but the highlight had to be during the spring of 2023 when she took part in her first pictorial in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. "Being a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model is a dream come true," she said in an SI video. "There's a lot of young girls that look up to me, and I feel like a lot of young girls also follow Sports Illustrated. So, both of our brands I think align because we both want to inspire the younger generation."

It was a quick shoot for the young student, who was at school one day and on a plane to Puerto Rico the next. After some swimwear fittings, Dunne faced the cameras for the session the following day. During the beach shoot, she modeled lines by the likes of Burberry, Deep Blue Bikini Co., and Gucci. But the pictorial raised red flags, with the U.K. Sun calling her images "outrageous" and even "racy." And Stanford basketball coach Tara VanDerveer wasn't impressed over how she felt female college athletes like Dunne were using sexuality in their promotion, despite enjoying more financial freedom in the wake of more relaxed NIL rules. "This is a step back," she said to The New York Times.

Dunne struck back on TikTok with a Christmas wish list revealing she'd rather receive a lump of coal than be in The New York Times.

One thing Olivia Dunne claims to be consistent is her content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. "Nothing has changed at all with my social media stuff," she said to Forbes. "I take it very seriously, and I keep it clean. And mostly I just want to be a role model to young girls. I want to set a good example, and I want to send out a message that we're more than just our sport. That's very important to me." There's no doubt that in her shoots and videos, she leaves her anatomical attributes concealed despite sometimes showing a lot of skin.

More recently, wags have noticed Dunne take the ultra-translucent avenue. Men's Journal couldn't help but point out the sheer fabric over the midriff and legs of a black outfit she wore in May 2024 at a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition party in Hollywood, marking the second time Dunne had appeared in the spread. She later showed up in an even sleeker red dress with more sheer material to highlight her physique. And The Sun noticed Dunne in what they called a "stunning" beaded black dress with a sheer midriff at a similar SI shindig in New York.

But Dunne's shift toward sheer fabrics might have been a playful response to media attention. On TikTok, while dressed in a semi-transparent black gown, she playfully wrote, "I can't tell if it's giving Pamela Anderson or cigarette mom."

In less than half a decade, Olivia Dunne's fashion sensibilities have taken more twists and turns than F1 drivers in Monaco. But the gymnast had another swivel in store for her millions of fans when she signed with Nautica, a fashion leader in casual apparel, for an undisclosed amount early in 2024.  "I am thrilled to be joining the Nautica family," said Dunne in a statement released by GIII, Nautica's parent company. "It's a brand that I have been a fan of since I was a child. Nautica perfectly aligns with my lifestyle because it values confidence, versatility and style."

The deal was surprising in that Dunne had long staked a reputation for wearing more risqué fare, symbolic of her female empowerment philosophy. That summer, instead of the plunging necklines and bare midriffs to which her followers had long been accustomed, she emerged at a publicity event in New York wearing a black, short-sleeved polo dress with white collars and trim. It wasn't too far removed from the preppy aesthetic that for years had pigeonholed Nautica and fellow clothiers like Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. Dunne, about to enter another year of study at LSU, looked more like she had enrolled at Harvard or Yale.

That said, the media was otherwise impressed by her appearance, with the Daily Mail saying Dunne could still turn heads and Sports Illustrated declaring the gymnast had "channeled her inner sassy, sophisticated Meredith Blake."

When asked on TikTok to describe her fashion style in three words, Olivia Dunne didn't waste any time with her answer. "I would say comfy, feminine, and chic," she replied. Going through Dunne's fashion evolution over the past 5 years, it's hard to dispute that she ticked off all those boxes with what she wore. And while she's run the gamut in her wardrobe from plucky to preppy, she hadn't dabbled in the glamor department with much consistency until the middle of 2024. Her appearance at a red-carpet reception at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game looked like she made up for lost time.

That day saw Dunne show up with her boyfriend, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes, who dressed in a white suit for the occasion. Meanwhile, Dunne dripped elegance from head to toe in a beige, spaghetti-strapped gown with sparkles that hearkened to her childhood fascination for anything shiny. A pair of silver sandal heels rounded out her look. "Today, I went with a more neutral approach. I wanted a mermaid look, a Barbie mermaid look," she said during an interview posted on Instagram. "The more sparkles, the better!"

As a starting pitcher, Skenes played a superlative game on the mound, which helped his American League conference beat his National League counterparts 5-3. But for her part, Dunne demonstrated that fashion-wise, she remains in a league of her own.

When a string of injuries sidelined Olivia Dunne from taking part in the Paris Olympics in 2024, that didn't stop her from jetting to the City of Lights to cheer for her colleagues on the U.S. gymnastics team. Not wanting to feel out of place in a city renowned for its own world-class fashion sensibilities, Dunne made sure her wardrobe was up to snuff. That included bringing an item requiring artificial intelligence to bring it to life.

Tucked away in her luggage was a custom striped crop jacket and skirt by designer Kristen Juszczyk, who used Microsoft's AI Co-Pilot feature to create the getup, something she previously did on an item made for Taylor Swift. The garment was a nice complement to Dunne's playfulness when she posed with her index finger positioned at the tip of the Louvre's glass pyramid entrance, accompanied by her alliterative "Liv, Laugh, Louvre" remark on Instagram. Juszczyk was stoked that Dunne chose her piece for a Parisian excursion, exclaiming on social media, "... So excited to share how this custom fit came out for @livvydunne to sport in Paris!"

Elsewhere in Paris, Dunne wore considerably less high-tech attire, whether she was lolling about in her quarters, hanging around the Eiffel Tower, or sampling the cuisine around town. It's interesting to note that someone who relied on technology to become rich and famous would also embrace that same tech to creating clothing to adorn her athletic frame.