How To Design Your Dream Gymnastics Leotard
Close your eyes and imagine that you’re back at gym with your coaches and your best friends. You’ve been dialing in the basics during your extra time at home and you feel great — ready to start practice and celebrate being in the gym again. Take a moment to vividly paint this scene in your mind: how does it look and smell? How do you feel in your happy place? And, what are you wearing? Is it a leotard that makes you feel extra magical, extra strong, extra fun? What would that dream leotard look and feel like? Now, open your eyes. We’re going to walk you through how to design your dream gymnastics leotard and bring your inspiration to life!
Our design process starts with inspiration and ends with a leotard that looks awesome and feels great to wear. In between there are many sketches, research into materials, and maybe a dead-end or two, because not all ideas are winners. And that’s OK! We hope you’ll give it a try too, and show us your dream leos!
Step 1: Get inspired!
- Inspiration is everywhere: Find what inspires you! A place you’ve been or want to go? Your favorite book? Your gym bestie?
- Collect images that match your inspiration. Look in magazines or catalogs; you can even take photos of things around you!
- Make a mood board by putting the best images together on one page. When you look at it, it should feel like your inspiration. Change up your images until it feels right!
Step 2: Sketch it!
- You’ll get lots of ideas from your mood board, but how do you know which ones you’ll like the best? Make small, quick drawings of your designs. They don’t have to be perfect!
- Take your favorite sketches and try changing them up. What if you combine two sketches into one design? Add something new to a sketch? Take something away?
- Ask for opinions! Show your sketches to a friend, a parent, or a coach and ask them what they think. They can help you decide which ideas are strongest.
Step 3: Design it!
- Now that you have your strongest idea, it's time to bring it to life. Print out one of our blank templates linked below and draw your design with color pencils or markers. Or you can go digital and draw using a computer or tablet.
- Be sure to pay attention to all the details. Does your leotard have hologram fabric, mesh, or rhinestones? You can draw arrows and write notes pointing out design details, or even glue little pieces of the fabrics—which are called swatches—to the page.
- Once your design is done, remember to give it an engaging name. The name can describe your leotard exactly or it can be about how it makes you feel. For example, our Unicorn Doodles has unicorns and doodles, but looking at our Sky's the Limit design made us feel like we could do anything!
Here at Destira, we use these steps to come up with the most fun, trend-setting designs for gymnasts everywhere. But what happens once a design is finished and chosen to join our amazing lineup?
We Sample it!
A design could look great on paper, but turn out to be different in ways we don't expect in real life. Before we press “Go” and make oodles of leotards, we order a sample to make sure it’s perfectly right. Once we receive the sample, Destira's design team looks very closely at the color, quality, and fit, to bring you the best leotard possible.
We Make it!
When the sample is perfect, the design is ready to go! The leotards are printed, cut, embellished, and sewn in our factories, then shipped to us. From there, they find their homes in gyms across the country and in the hands of gymnasts like you, helping you feel your best at every workout.
Share your Leotard Designs with Us
You don’t have to be a professional designer to come up with great concepts for a leotard! What would make your home workout feel even more fun? What would you and your teammates want to wear when you’re all together again to show your gym pride? Gather your inspiration, use the templates below to start sketching, and then show us your designs. If you share on social, please tag your posts with #mydreamdestira, so we’re sure to see your work!
Design Templates
Would you like to create your own dream leotard? Download and print these blank templates to get started! If you are looking for custom team leotards and apparel, check out our custom leotards page!
