The Italian tennis player collaborated with Nike’s Chief Design Officer on a head-to-toe ensemble that references his Dolomite mountain roots and championship skiing background, marking the second Nike Atelier project following Maria Sharapova’s Hall of Fame dress.
Nike has created a non-commercial athlete edition for tennis champion Jannik Sinner to wear during public appearances at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, combining ACG (All Conditions Gear) design elements with technical innovations from the brand’s winter sports apparel.
Martin Lotti, Nike’s Chief Design Officer, led the project alongside Raffaella Barbey, Senior Design Director, working with Sinner through multiple fittings at the Australian Open in Melbourne. The ensemble includes a jacket reimagining vintage ACG silhouettes, an insulated vest featuring Nike’s adaptive A.I.R. (Athlete Imagined Revolution) technology, tailored pants, and winter-performance footwear.
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Dolomite topography translated into fabric technology
The aesthetic direction leverages Sinner’s professional skiing lineage, utilizing topographical motifs from the Dolomite region. Functional hardware includes a pure silver carabiner shaped after Alpine elevation mapping, integrated into the custom pant construction. The jacket employs hybrid construction methods, pairing a GORE-TEX technical outer shell with a three-layer wool interior fabric.
Beyond competition: designing for the in-between moments
When Martin Lotti calls it “Nike Atelier,” he’s describing something the sports industry hasn’t quite cracked yet: how to design for the moments when athletes aren’t competing. This is Nike’s second attempt. The first was Maria Sharapova’s Hall of Fame dress. Now comes Jannik Sinner’s Winter Games wardrobe—a calculated move to position the brand at Milano Cortina 2026 without writing a cheque for official olympic sponsorship.
The project works because Sinner’s backstory does.
Sinner grew up skiing competitively in the Dolomites before switching to tennis. The Winter Games are in his backyard. Nike is relaunching ACG in Milan and introducing A.I.R. apparel technology through Team USA’s Therma-FIT Air Milano jacket. Everything aligns.
The custom ensemble appeared in fashion media interviews and at an ACG relaunch event, giving Nike a presence in Winter Games conversations without Olympic partnership constraints. It’s marketing, certainly. But it’s also product development disguised as storytelling—a way to test materials and techniques that might inform future commercial collections whilst demonstrating how deeply the brand understands the athletes it backs.
