Mom knows best

In contrast, his teammate Karen Chen's costumes are all made by her mother.

She told The New York Times she had stayed awake for 20 hours, four days in a row making the latest one.

"I barely slept at all, but I wanted to make something really special," she said. "I know in the future I won't have this chance because she will have a different life, and I will miss this."

"I love it so much," Chen told AFP. "She does like 98 percent of the work. I just put in like two percent and by two percent just like,'Oh, that looks good'."

Latvia's Deniss Vasiljevs doesn't always get as much fashion support from his parents.

Asked what he thought they would be thinking after his free skate, he said:"My dad is probably complaining about my hair."

Vasiljevs' ponytail, the only one in the men's event, stayed resolutely intact despite its owner's dizzying spins and jumps.

"I started my season with my hair like a rooster," he said. "I was just trying different things and somehow it's holding and I'm happy."

National pride

Some at the Games have used their clothes to showcase their countries' culture.

Donovan Carrillo, Mexico's first figure skater in 30 years, performed his short program in a dazzling gold-and-black shirt custom-made for him by a Mexican designer. "I love it!" he joyously told journalists afterward.

He followed that up by emerging from his free skate in a jacket adorned with Mexican lucha libre wrestling face masks.

"I'm super happy because since I was a kid I always liked to watch it with my dad," Carrillo said.

He said one of the people involved in the team jacket's design was Hubertus von Hohenlohe, Mexico's only athlete at the 2014 Sochi Games, best remembered for his own idiosyncratic mariachi ski suit.

In pairs, China's Peng Cheng's and Jin Yang's outfits are inspired by Chinese ink painting and hand-stitched using traditional embroidery techniques from Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

"It is very delicate," said Peng. "They were specially made for the Olympic Games."

Aliens and villains

Costumes can be used for dramatic effect－like Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States, whose looks helped tell the tale of an "alien and astronaut" falling for each other.

Chock, who designs their costumes, said the story was one of "universal love".

Germany's Tim Dieck and Katharina Mueller went the other way and dressed as Batman villains for their rhythm dance.

"Once I made this hairstyle (two pigtails) and thought it was kind of funny, and somehow we came to (DC Comics villains) Harley Quinn and Joker, and we loved it straightaway," said Mueller. The judges preferred the love story-Chock and Bates finished fourth in ice dancing, while the Germans failed to qualify for the free dance.

Top marks for tigress

It's rare to see bold fashion choices off the ice rink, so a special mention must go to France's Lucile Lefevre, who competed in a full-body tiger suit in the snowboard Big Air event.

Lefevre had injured herself and so couldn't perform tricks－instead turning to the cameras mid-air and making claw motions.