Olympian Karen Chen reveals her figure skating dress was designed by her mom

Karen Chen’s handmade dress features a subtle nod to her free skate routine

American figure skater Karen Chen is showing off all the details of her butterfly dress for this year’s Winter Olympics. The best part about her costume? It was made by her mom.

On Monday, Team USA shared a video of the Olympian on Instagram, where she provided all the details on her handmade dress crafted by her mom, Hsiu-Hui Tseng. The lavender dress is embellished with rhinestones along the front of the dress, with bell sleeves and an illusion neckline. “She probably does 90 per cent of the work and I do ten percent, and by ten percent I just tell her, ‘Oh that looks good’ or ‘That doesn’t look good,’” Chen said in the video.

Chen, 22, even showed off her favorite feature of the dress, a rhinestone butterfly. The embellishment is a nod to Chen’s free skate routine to "Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto.” Pointing to the butterfly at the bottom of the dress, she said her mom “strategically put the stones and arranged them in a way so it looks like a butterfly.”

On Monday, Chen performed her butterfly routine where she landed a double Axel-triple toe loop combination, and placed fourth with a score of 131.52. Chen celebrated the US figure skating team’s silver medal on Instagram.

“Truly what a journey of so many emotions these past few days,” she captioned the post. “So proud & thankful to be a part of this team!”

Whether it was the dress or her graceful figure skating skills, Chen fully embodied a butterfly on the ice.