Winter Olympics ski champion Eileen Gu is the hottest name in luxury: with brand deals from Louis Vuitton to Luckin Coffee, and Cadillac to Chanel, the freestyle teen touches Gen Z in China and the US alike

Feb 4 , 2022

Eileen Gu may look like a professional model, but she’s actually China’s greatest hope for an Olympic medal haul. Photo: @eileen_gu/Instagram

Beijing Winter Olympics 2022

US-born Gu announced she was representing China by wearing the country’s team colours for a meeting with Xi Jinping back in 2019 – and now she’s a sponsor’s dream

Brands including Victoria’s Secret, Tiffany & Co., Estée Lauder and Fendi are lining up to have the 18-year-old promote their products ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

Eileen Feng Gu (also known as Gu Ailing), was born in the US, but after meeting President Xi Jinping at a Winter Olympics preparation event back in 2019, dressed in the Chinese team uniform, she has officially switched to representing China – her mother’s homeland – in her favourite sport. And she fulfilled China’s hopes in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics by bringing home her first gold medal in the freeski big air competition.

It was her ski-mad mum who kick-started her career, reportedly enrolling Gu in lessons in Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, so that she could keep up with her. Gu told Forbes that in doing so, her mother “accidentally created a pro skier”.

Eileen Gu poses with her first place trophy after the Women’s Freeski Halfpipe at the Toyota US Grand Prix in January. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

In case you’re wondering what type of skiing Gu’s involved in, it’s the cool type – aka freestyle – which involves pulling off jumps, tricks and various other forms of aerial acrobatics, rather than the more traditional, timed downhill races.

But Gu is something of an all-rounder, competing in everything from the freeski half-pipe and freeski slopestyle (skiing a course with various jumps and rails that allow you to do tricks), to freeski big air events (like slopestyle, but with terrifyingly large jumps). As a result, she nabbed a record haul of medals at last year’s FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships and at the Winter X Games.

These days she’s stretched as thin off the slopes as she is on them though, thanks to a whole host of luxury brand commitments. In fact, she appears to be the most sponsored individual athlete of the forthcoming Olympics, with more than 20 endorsements to her name … and counting.

Eileen Gu wearing the Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 4. Photo: IWC

She is a global ambassador for Tiffany & Co. (she has described herself as a “jewellery fiend”) and first appeared in the US luxury jeweller’s 2021 Give Me The T campaign. She also has a partnership with Louis Vuitton, starring in a December 2021 campaign for its Twist bags; and just became a brand ambassador for Swiss watchmaker IWC Schaffhausen in January 2022, performing tricks in a skate park for its Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 4.

Gu also made Victoria’s Secret’s 2o21 list of empowering women, and has relationships with US beauty giant Estée Lauder and quintessentially American carmaker Cadillac. Meanwhile in China, her commercial partners have included online mall JD.com, sportswear company Anta, dairy giant Yili and coffee chain Luckin Coffee.

She is also an enthusiastic fashionista, regularly appearing in the front row at fashion weeks, and herself modelling for the likes of Fendi and Chanel through agency IMG – not to mention the magazine covers she’s graced.