How Mariah Keopple resides her desires in hockey and vogue

It took Mariah Keopple weeks to seek out the proper shade of Torrent blue.

The Seattle defender had a really specific look in thoughts for her game-day outfit forward of the enlargement franchise’s first-ever house opener in November. The color needed to be actual, touchdown between river and glacier blue (with out fairly reaching the colourful, icy hue of the Kraken). The cloth wanted to strike the fitting stability between informal consolation and complex polish. And the design? Well, that was all her personal: A fitted corset prime with a straight-across neckline, paired with matching wide-leg pants and topped with a hood draped over her lengthy darkish hair and loosely fixed beneath her chin. 

In addition to being a fashion-forward ode to the brand new PWHL franchise — certainly one of two within the league’s westward enlargement forward of the 2025-26 marketing campaign — the outfit was additionally an ideal illustration of not solely Keopple’s model however her talent, as every bit was made totally along with her personal two arms. 

In addition to her success on the ice as a third-year PWHL professional, Keopple can also be carving out — and stitching up — a burgeoning vogue enterprise. A lifelong artistic, she dove head-first into stitching in 2020 and 4 years later launched her personal model, Riah The Label. She repeatedly dons her creations on recreation days, straight out of her creativeness and contemporary off her stitching machine, her enviornment tunnel entrances serving up appears worthy of a runway. And simply final fall, she debuted her designs on an precise runway along with her first vogue present. 

Keopple’s aspirations as an athlete and as a designer may appear at odds with each other, however the actuality is sort of the alternative. It was hockey that finally gave her the platform to totally unleash her artistic aspect. And very similar to her path to the professionals, the 25-year-old’s street to the runway was, she says, “serendipitous” in its timing, the mix launching Keopple right into a life she didn’t even know she may dream about. 

“If you were to tell me, freshman year of college, that this is where my life would be, I would never have believed you, ever,” she says.  

The Wisconsinite Keopple was born right into a love of each hockey and artistic expression. As a child, when she wasn’t on skates, she was dreaming up craft initiatives. And artwork class in school “was when I thrived,” she says, smiling. “It was the best.”

Keopple’s mother and father inspired her artistic streak, as did her grandmother — Nana arrange a bit nook at her home, the place the teenager spent hours drawing and colouring and crafting her approach via no matter she may dream up. 

“She was always teaching me how to knit, how to crochet,” Keopple says of her grandmother. Now, Nana serves up model inspiration, too — it’s no thriller the place Keopple will get her vogue sense. 

“She is above-and-beyond fashionable. Like, when she shows up to my games, she’s in, like, the longest, beautiful trench coat with her hats, her gloves,” says Keopple. “Definitely, like, I want to grow up and I want to be her. She definitely kind of fueled that artistic inner part of me.”

Though the humanities took a again seat as hockey ramped up in highschool, with Keopple eyeing school packages and scholarship gives and ultimately deciding on Princeton, her urge to create returned when she most wanted an outlet, because the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation the 2020-21 school season. With hockey on pause, Keopple took a niche yr between her sophomore and junior campaigns and rediscovered her artistic aspect. She purchased her first stitching machine — a fundamental Brother mannequin she calls her “tried and true” — and taught herself to stitch via trial and error and YouTube tutorials. She began with easy pillowcases, then moved on to tote baggage. It didn’t take lengthy for her curiosity about garment stitching to kick in, however when it got here to creating clothes, she didn’t begin easy in any respect. 

While strolling down an aisle of textiles at a thrift retailer, Keopple fell in love with a set of classic floral placemats and was instantly impressed to show them right into a corset prime. 

“I did not notice how tough that was till, like, I completed it,” she says now, with amusing. “I was just kind of determined. Now, looking back, I’m glad I started with it because I’ve definitely perfected a lot of the skills doing it. But that was a crazy move by me, for sure.”

Challenging because it was, the venture was formative for each the muse of her garment-sewing skillset, and her complete design id. Corset tops are a core a part of Riah The Label’s providing, and she or he repeatedly sources second-hand supplies, typically repurposing desk linens, curtains and different house textiles. “I love using that type of material,” she says. 

Every repurposed piece is a chance to tailor-make one thing all her personal, skipping fast-fashion choices and as a substitute creating one thing one-of-a-kind that’s constructed to final. 

“I was just always sick of, you know, you go on vacation and you go and buy the five shirts that are 20 bucks and they never make it out of the vacation,” she says. “Nothing was what I wanted, quality-wise. I just noticed myself shopping less and less and trying to make more of my clothes. And it’s also just nice because it’s one-of-a-kind, you know other people aren’t going to have it.”

As Keopple delved deeper into stitching and design, the concept of pursuing both professionally wasn’t on her thoughts as an undergrad. The similar went for hockey — with no sustainable skilled ladies’s league in place on the time, she assumed her enjoying days would come to an finish as soon as she graduated from Princeton. That modified as she neared the top of her senior yr in 2023 with rumblings of a brand new league starting to warmth up. 

“I’m so grateful … I graduated after which this league was introduced a month later,” she says of the PWHL. “It is truly incredible that we’re all three years into this now.”

Keopple went unselected within the PWHL’s inaugural draft within the fall of 2023, however was prolonged an invitation to Montreal’s coaching camp and earned a roster spot. It was there, in Montreal, that hockey and vogue actually got here collectively for her, beginning with the membership’s house opener that yr. Keopple donned an off-white blazer with matching pants — a set she didn’t sew, however did customise utilizing iron-on patches for an outfit worthy of the event. She adorned the entrance of the jacket with the PWHL emblem in Montreal’s colors, and put the sport’s date on the again above a black-and-white Canadian flag and the phrases ‘TEAM MONTREAL’. Dotted down her proper pant leg have been heat-pressed patches with signatures of her teammates. 

“That was the first outfit that I ever kind of debuted, I guess, in a creative sense,” she says. 

“Everyone just loved it,” she says. “That’s when people kind of were just like, ‘Oh, you made that? That’s crazy!’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I also sew!’” The requests began coming in from associates and teammates who wished their very own variations. She designed three for some Ottawa gamers that yr, along with some fit-flips — taking a garment from a teammate’s closet that doesn’t get a lot put on and customizing it into an announcement piece they love. Her confidence grew; her model flourished. 

“That’s when I really started getting into making things and then wearing them specifically for games,” she says. 

As she turned a mainstay on Montreal’s blue line, her game-day model attracted increasingly more discover, too. 

“It was all the time like, ‘What are you gonna put on subsequent?’ and it was lots of people simply commenting, too, like, ‘I am unable to wait to see Mariah’s outfit!’ and issues like that,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really need to keep up on this!’ It’s so fun.”

She liked seeing teammates’ reactions and collaborating on concepts with them. “It was really fun to share that creativity with them as well and see how excited they were for it,” she says.

She credit her Montreal teammates in that first PWHL season with encouraging her to take her ardour and run with it. That’s who first urged her to submit her course of on Instagram, and later pushed her to start out a model to point out off her game-day designs, resulting in the start of Riah The Label in February 2024. When asks from teammates and associates began coming in sooner than she may launch designs, Keopple selected to collaborate with Royalty, a sportswear firm and PWHL associate, to make branded merchandise like hoodies and hats. That natural-feeling escalation has resulted in a joyful course of, one that permits Keopple to point out off her personal model and see others do the identical.

Keopple’s game-day wardrobe is exclusive — her one-of-kind designs typically paired with thrifted ready-to-wear items and styled in no matter approach speaks to her on any given game-day — however she’s in good firm in terms of PWHL gamers serving up vogue statements. 

Social media accounts throughout the league are stuffed with video montages and picture carousels of gamers’ arrivals. Keopple makes some extent to take a look at all of them.

“Every single game, after a team’s walk-ins are posted, I go and look at everyone’s walk-ins. Like, I just think it’s so cool to see how people take fashion and style and create a version of themselves — like, how are they expressing themselves?” says Keopple, a psychology main whose school thesis was centred across the connection between vogue and private id. “I love seeing everyone walking out and doing their own thing, and I love how fans have embraced it, too.”

Fashion and sport, she says, have “really become a huge thing.” She factors to the WNBA as leaders in linking the 2 and praises the PWHL for leaning into it proper from the beginning. 

“Our league has really embraced it from the jump and been, like, full-force in it. I absolutely love it,” she says. 

Developing your private model, she explains, doesn’t should imply staying in any single lane. Ask her to outline hers, and she or he struggles to seek out the phrases.

“Oh gosh, this is a question I never know how to answer. My game-day outfits can be so different. And I love them all,” she says. 

And that’s the enjoyable of it. “Even just day-to-day I feel like my closet a very [wide] range of things. Sometimes I’ll just wanna wear, like, a street style-type vibe. And then other times it’s just the complete opposite — just super outrageous things,” she says. “I feel like I don’t really have one particular style. But game days are such a good and easy way to showcase so many different styles … On game day, you can do it all. I definitely like to just experiment in lots of different styles and textures and things like that.”

Expression via vogue isn’t nearly off-ice model. Keopple sees firsthand how empowering athletes to precise themselves via vogue can translate to the sport. 

“Look good, really feel good, play good — it is such a factor,” she says. “Obviously, if you happen to’re feeling good about your self, you are extra assured about your self, you are gonna go on the market and carry out higher. … The extra assured you’re, the higher you carry out.

“It’s not just sport — it’s work, it’s whatever [someone is doing]. I think if [style is an area] that brings you confidence, I love seeing people really dive into that,” she says. “Because I do think it makes a huge difference, if you’re really passionate about it.”

As Keopple’s personal ardour for design grew, so did her aspirations within the trade. She gave herself permission to dream larger and picture what her items may appear to be modeled on a runway. Last summer season, after she signed a one-year take care of Seattle in free company, Keopple’s agent inspired her to use to be a part of Fashion in Flight, a Seattle-based vogue present geared toward serving to new designers get observed. During the applying course of, she shared her imaginative and prescient for her assortment and, lower than three months earlier than the present was to run, Riah was accepted. 

Her idea was about to turn out to be a set however first she needed to really make all of it. And so started her dash to the runway. Working from Wisconsin, the place she spends her off-seasons at house, she started working designing, drafting and perfecting 12 completely different appears for the present. Her signature corset took on a central function. Long inseams have been a outstanding characteristic. Vintage and vintage-inspired thrifted supplies factored in closely. 

“It was just kind of everything that I personally think of Riah [rolled] into one show. I had some sweatpants in there — I just love the corset-sweatpant vibe,” she says. “What I want the brand to be is what I wanted to portray in the show.”

Her days adopted a strict schedule to get the whole lot carried out in time, all of the whereas coaching for her first season in Seattle. 

“It was insane. My days have been cut up up actually in half: I might get up early, I might go to the fitness center, go skate, do all of the coaching, remedy, all that stuff. Get house, eat, bathe. Then the remainder of the day was designing and creating all my items,” she explains. “I don’t [outsource manufacturing], so I created all of [the pieces] by myself. I was in a grind. It honestly feels like it went by so fast because every single day I was just, like, in the biggest routine ever.”

Three weeks earlier than the present, she moved to Seattle. It was a chaotic time, however one she’d relive in a heartbeat. 

The present, and your complete expertise, “was spectacular,” she says, pondering again. “It was amazing. So many of my teammates showed up. It was really cool.”

Now that she’s deep into the hockey season with Seattle, her routine appears rather a lot completely different. Hockey is her prime precedence, and it consists of a whole lot of journey — particularly being on the west coast in a league based within the east. But she sews each probability she will get throughout house stints, establishing a makeshift studio on her massive kitchen island. Even street journeys contain a bit crafting on the go: she’s hardly ever with out a needle and thread, and on a current flight busied herself hand-beading a corset.

Keopple has huge summer season plans for Riah. This yr, she’s seeking to launch the model’s core assortment with the assistance of a small producer she met with throughout the PWHL’s Olympic break final month, so her ready-to-wear designs may be made accessible to extra folks.

“I would love to hand make every single one of my pieces like I do right now but it’s just not feasible. So, it was really, really exciting [to have this meeting],” she says. 

She additionally plans to proceed styling for teammates. And stitching. Always stitching. 

“I never want to lose the sewing. I love to sew and I love to create, so creating one-off pieces and one-of-a-kind things is still definitely what I want to do and have those available,” she says. “So, kind of piecing all that: ready-to-wear, some artistic vibes, and styling all in one.”

Right now, which means drafting some new corset patterns — like that Torrent-blue design she rocked on the house opener, which was closely influenced by her runway line and stays certainly one of her favorite appears thus far.

“I’m engaged on a few completely different corset patterns, so I’ve simply been making an attempt to sample these out and make samples of them and type of see how they are going, in hopes of sporting these afterward within the season,” she says. “It takes a long time to pattern and sample and alter and then sample again.”

She doesn’t presently have plans for an additional runway present, however is aware of she needs to do one sooner or later. In the meantime, there are game-day outfits to plan, her personal stage on which to shine as she desires up what comes subsequent, each on and off the ice. 

“Just having all it in the works is really cool,” she says. “I’m really excited.”