The countdown is on!

Ralph Lauren unveiled the official uniforms Team USA will wear at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic and Paralympics on Thursday, Dec. 4, and the collections are filled with patriotic spirit and special significance.

Before of the public reveal, PEOPLE spoke with David Lauren — Chief Branding and Innovation Officer of Ralph Lauren Corporation — about the multi-piece uniform collections, which were designed for the opening and closing ceremonies of the upcoming Games.

“We’re very proud to outfit Team USA,” he tells PEOPLE, highlighting the milestone that is Ralph Lauren’s tenth consecutive Games outfitting Team USA — a legacy built over nearly two decades.

“It’s one of the proudest moments you can have as a company and as a creative institution to work on this global stage with the greatest team in the world,” he adds.

David, who’s the son of the iconic American brand’s founder Ralph Lauren, gave a glimpse into the creation of the uniforms and shared several sweet, spirited secrets that are behind each of the looks in the collection.

Ralph Lauren outfits the Team USA athletes for the Winter and Summer Olympics and Paralympics, which respectively take place every four years. That means, the designers get to work well in advance to ensure the uniforms are ready for game time.

“We start designing about two and a half years out. As the last Winter Games ended, we started to design,” shares David, noting, “We’ve already spent a year working on what we will create for the [2028] L.A. Olympics!”

The uniforms each year are backed by research and understanding the “culture and history” of the Olympic venue, says David, in addition to tapping athletes who are competing in the Games to ensure that they “feel comfortable and confident” on the global stage.

The opening ceremony uniform features a long, winter-white wool coat with heritage-inspired wooden toggles, an American flag wool turtleneck sweater and tailored wool trousers.

The monochromatic whites will be a moment, predicts David.

“I think the white is going to be very exciting this year,” he tells PEOPLE. “Creating something that’s pure and simple in a complex world is a story, but I think it’s starting to resonate with people around the world and I think you’ll be seeing a lot of whites in the winter.”

“And I think you’re going to be seeing the kinds of cuts, and silhouettes, and the quality of the materials starting to trend,” he adds. “But that’s what we do at Ralph Lauren, we lead and we make sure that we create things that we believe in and things that we’ll endure.”

For the closing ceremony uniforms, RL took inspiration from ski racing kits. The pieces are sporty and vibrant, featuring a modern, color-blocked puffer jacket with bold Team USA graphics and a wool turtleneck sweater in patriotic colors, paired with a solid, white utility pant.

“We want to do things that are timeless and classic, but we also want to be incredibly trend forward,” David says of both collections, which are each completed with red, white and blue knit hats and mittens, a leather belt and brown suede alpine boots with spirited red laces.

“What’s fun about creating the Olympic uniforms is that these are collectible, they’re pieces of history,” he shares. “These athletes will create history — and along with them, the clothes that they wear become a part of a culture and a time that people will collect.”

In addition to the opening and closing ceremony uniforms, Ralph Lauren also created a Team USA Collection that offers a range of apparel and accessories for men, women and children that reflects the style and energy of the Winter Games.

“We have the distinct honor of dressing the team for the opening ceremonies, for the closing ceremonies, and then what’s called the ‘Village Gear,’ which is what the athletes and their families and spectators get to wear all around the games in Milan and around the world,” notes David.

Red, white and blue, of course, are at the core of these pieces, which include sweaters, puffers, fleece outerwear and heritage hockey-inspired silhouettes.

There’s also a striking leather shearling jacket included in the collection, an item with “personal” significance to David — who was wearing the statement outwear piece during the interview — and the Ralph Lauren family patriarch.

“This is one of the jackets my father wore when he first started this company, and he used to sell ties door to door wearing a jacket like this,” he shares. “For it to be part of the uniform makes it even more personal, but it is an icon of American culture and it’s very distinctively Ralph Lauren.”

In years past, Ralph Lauren has incorporated cutting-edge technology into their Olympic uniforms (see Michael Phelps’ battery-powered electroluminescent blazer at the 2016 Summer Games, for example).

For the 2026 Winter Games, however, the brand took a different approach.

“We have usually created something that’s cutting edge technology, jackets that light up, temperature proficient products,” he shares. “This time we kept things a little cleaner and simpler, and I think that tells the story as well.”

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