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

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.

It was her ski-mad mum who kick-started her career, reportedly enrolling Eileen 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”.

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.

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 though agency IMG – not to mention the magazine covers she’s graced.

Her popularity is part of a broader trend from luxury brands to begin to move away from traditional showbiz celebrities, and towards people achieving success in other areas – especially in sports.
 
Moreover, Gu represents a uniquely profitable proposition for brands: not only does her sporting prowess make her likely to become the breakout star of the 2022 Winter Olympics, but she has genuine cut-through in both China and the West, as someone who authentically straddles both cultures – much like last year’s Gen Z tennis breakout star, Emma Raducanu.

Nor has her advocacy – of causes ranging from women’s rights to racial equality – hurt her attractiveness to prospective sponsors. What’s more, if Gu wins a gold medal in Beijing, sports-marketing analyst Dorfman predicts it could be worth US$10 million in new sponsorship deals. Not bad for an 18-year-old!