Photo: Donald Miralle/Getty Images

Ryan Lochte, budding fashion plate, stands out at the Golden Goggle Awards (swimming’s biggest gala) in a white leisure suit paired with a black shirt and bright red tie. “Looking sharp there, Ryan!” remarks the evening’s emcee, Carson Daly. “Very Travolta of you.”

In a video that airs on NBC during the Beijing Olympics, Lochte shows off a few of his favorite bedazzled accessories, including a giant skull pendant, a blinding belt buckle — and his soon-to-be-signature diamond grill. (“It’s just like a very shiny, expensive retainer,” he explains.)

Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for IMG

Lochte cleverly begins to infiltrate the fashion world, sitting front row at a handful of spring 2009 shows at New York Fashion Week including Max Azria, Milly, and Anna Sui. Throughout it all, he reiterates his goal of becoming a designer, telling The Cut, "I’m really into fashion, and I’m trying to slowly get out of swimming. I want [my line] to be business and dressy, but also skater. It’s going to be a mix of dressy, punk, rapper, surfer, and skateboarder." Okay!

Photo: Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

While cozying up to Rocawear co-creator Jay Z at the U.N. Global Leadership Awards Gala, Lochte casually tells People that he's given design input over at Speedo. "I gave [them] ideas for the T-shirts and board shorts we wore at the Olympics," he says. "I've always loved clothes, shoes."

In a video interview, Lochte spells out his fashion-world ambitions, of which he has many. "That'd be awesome if I could do modeling," he says. "Just like print ads, nothing like runway, no way. And maybe later down the road, I can finally design my own clothing brand." His proposed name for the collection? "Jeah!"

A long-haired Lochte appears in a video to promote his limited-edition Speedo footwear collection, the pièce de résistance of which is a pair of bright green crystal-encrusted high tops with “Ryan” printed in yellow on one sole and “Lochte” on the other. “Those shoes are just gonna light up. They're gonna light up the sky!” he laughs.

In what will surely go down in history as one of the most important videos to ever grace YouTube, Lochte gamely agrees to a test of his knowledge of popular fashion terms. He offers up correct (if not particularly detailed) descriptions of skinny jeans and capri pants, but fumbles when questioned about rompers. "See, what comes to mind [is] a girl with a big butt. A ROMPER." Guess we won't be seeing him design any Coachella capsule collections, then.

Lochte becomes the fourth man to ever cover American Vogue for the magazine's June issue, posing alongside Hope Solo and Serena Williams. It must be nice, it must be nice ... to have Wintour on your side.

Photo: Edward Linsmier for The New York Times

A New York Times profile of the swimming champ reiterates that "Mr. Lochte's dream is to eventually become a clothing designer," and mentions his shoe designs for Speedo as well as his personal sneaker collection: he owns, by his count, about 130 pairs. "I want to be different, and fashion gives me that outlet to do that," he explains.

Photo: Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Lochte starts making his own merch, selling colorful $15 sunglasses that read "REEZY JEAH!" and "LOCHTE 2012" across their lenses on his website. He's forced to temporarily halt sales during the Olympics, thanks to Rule 40 — but still! Progress!

Photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images

After winning a gold medal at the London Olympics, Lochte is chastised for wearing his custom red, white, and blue diamond grill on the winners' podium. The patriotic mouth accessory, reportedly worth $25,000, was made by the rapper Paul Wall and Houston celebrity jeweler Johnny Dang. In an interview with The New York Times, Dang's operations manager Tony Khan shared that the piece was "completely Mr. Lochte's design."

Photo: Robin Marchant/WireImage

Lochte files papers with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark "Jeah." According to the documents, he intends to slap his much-maligned catchphrase on "sunglasses, T-shirts, sweatshirts, swimsuits, jackets, and jewelry," among other wearable items. Then, in an interview with Celebuzz, Lochte reveals that he's in talks with E! to star in a reality show. The angle? "Pretty much, they follow me on my normal day, just training, doing my fashion line," he says. "It's gonna be me being myself, and I'm pretty much going to show the world that and my new fashion line." Lochte's sports agent Erika Wright confirms to The Hollywood Reporter that her superstar client has indeed "received offers to create a fashion line."

Determined to learn more about Lochte's mysterious new fashion venture, Style.com interrogates the swimmer's Vogue shoot-mate Karlie Kloss. "He was really interested in fashion, actually; he wants to have his own line," she confirms. "I was surprised by how in the know he was." And the kicker? "Yeah, I will walk in his show for sure."

Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for EleVen by Venus Williams

Just one month after the Olympics, Lochte makes an impressive showing at New York Fashion Week, attending a whopping 17 events in total. Among his many stops? An appearance at Calvin Klein's New York flagship for Fashion's Night Out (RIP), a hosting gig for something called Guy's Fashion's Night Out (???), and a photo op at the Eleven by Venus Williams presentation, during which he presumably gleans tips from the tennis champ on how to juggle an athletic career with a clothing business. He tells the New York Daily News that his own line will come out "sooner [rather] than later" and be like "Ralph Lauren, but with a little edge to it."

Photo: Rabbani and Solimene Photography/Getty Images for Calvin Klein Collection

Page Six spots Lochte dining with a group of Vogue editors at NYC's The Lion before grabbing drinks with designer Richard Chai. In an interview with Buzzfeed, the swimmer confirms, "I’ve talked to designers and they helped me out and gave me insight. And you know what? I’m going to take it. And hopefully you’ll see my line next year at Fashion Week.” Notably, he also refers to Anna Wintour as "a sweetheart."

Photo: E!

E! announces that Lochte's long-rumored reality show, What Would Ryan Lochte Do?, will premiere in April. According to the network's press release, the series will "feature the swimmer partying and training as he prepares for the 2016 Rio Olympics while building his fashion line." That same week, a second E! press release confirms that said fashion line, is, in fact, still coming, and will "reportedly feature shoes — as if he needs more with his 150 pairs — and an eclectic assortment of glitzy accessories, which he is fond of wearing himself!"

Photo: MTV

In a somewhat contradictory interview with MTV, Lochte admits that his fans shouldn't hold their breath for that fashion line after all. "Whatever I want to do, I want to do 110 percent. Since I'm doing the show and swimming ... when I hang up the Speedo, then I'll start putting my focus into design." Quit playing games with our heart, dude.

Photo: E!

In news that shouldn't shock anyone who watched the aforementioned MTV interview, not a single episode of What Would Ryan Lochte Do? shows the Olympian designing, sketching, or planning a collection in any concrete way. (He does, however, take a lot of girls out for sushi at the same Gainesville restaurant.) In Episode 5, however, Lochte grandly claims that he "[wants] to design everything from the bottom of shoes all the way up to the top of hats," before taking a super-secret meeting with the Speedo marketing team (not televised). And in Episode 4, he mentions wanting to launch a children's clothing line. "I always see babies and the clothes that they wear and it's horrendous," he muses. "It's gonna be something that they see, they're like, 'Damn. My son would look cute in that! He's gonna be a straight-up pimp!'" The conversation never leads to anything further, and What Would Ryan Lochte Do? is canceled after eight episodes.

Photo: Speedo

As part of Speedo's Art of the Cap campaign, Lochte teams up with artist Dave Kinsey to design a limited-edition argyle swim cap in his favorite colors, green and yellow. He donates proceeds from the cap to benefit Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD).

Photo: @ryanlochte

After Lochte is gifted five pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes ("#swag #jeah"), TMZ reports, "we're told he's hoping to lock up an official endorsement deal with the brand." No word as to whether this hypothetical gig would involve design input on Lochte's part, and Louboutin never directly comments on the matter.

Photo: Ryan Liu/FilmMagic

In between his intense training sessions for his fourth Olympic Games in Rio, Lochte assures Team USA that, don't worry, that clothing line WILL STILL HAPPEN. Eventually. "Anything I do I want to go all in to it. I do want to design my own clothes, but I won’t do that until after I’m through swimming,” he explains. So after Rio, perhaps? Not so fast: Lochte insists he has no plan to retire anytime soon. "I’ll quit swimming when I stop having fun, and I’m having a blast right now," he says.