Athletic Wear: clothing, including footwear, worn for sport or physical exercise
Leisure Wear: informal clothing designed to be worn when you are relaxing

Why not just combine them and make everyday clothing more comfortable?!?

I don’t know about you, but you can catch me wearing ‘Athleisure” wear, really just relaxing athletic wear like leggings and a quarter-zip or athletic top, on about 4 out of 5 school days in a single week. While some may think just wearing jeans and a sweater or nice top isn’t dressing up, it can be a lot of work for us girls (and guys!) that wake up 5 minutes before we have to leave for school. And sitting at school for around 7 hours a day? Nah , if I’m being forced to be in school for that long I am definitely doing to be the most comfortable that I can. And thus for many people, especially those that go to work every day and also work out, athleisure is the cutest, comfiest, and easiest way to dress.

This trend of athleisure wear, although it was officially birthed in the early 1970s, has really started to make its way up the ladder throughout the past two decades. And it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. In a Forbes article titled, “The Athleisure Trend Isn’t Taking A Rest”, Matt Powell from NPD took a strong stance backing athleisure, “[It] rules the runway, and the line between what is an athletic shoe and a casual shoe continues to blur. Brands and retailers must continue to feed this trend.” Essentially athletic wear = the new casual. 

When we look at brands surrounding athleisure, although there are no official constraints for what brands are considered in the athleisure department; Lululemon is definitely the most popular and well-known brand. Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon, is often considered “the creator of the athleisure trend”. He attended a yoga class as a way to destress and was in awe, not of the yoga, but of the clothes that were worn, yoga pants. He created this brand and it truly “sparked a global fashion revolution”, according to The Atlantic’s article “Everything You Wear Is Athleisure”. This clothing “injected prodigious quantities of spandex into modern dress and blurred the lines between yoga-and-spin-class attire and normal street wear”. The population quickly grabbed hold of this idea and this brand and it skyrocketed, as we know by the popularity of the Lululemon brand, especially in teens.

Again if you’re someone like me this trend is PERFECT because our outfits can still be labeled as “cute” and “trendy” but we are feeling super comfy all day long. I wanted to specifically highlight my friend Kelly Zhou because not only did I get this idea from her, she rocks the athleisure look all the time and is a bit of an inspiration for some of my daily outfits. In this image of her, you can already tell how comfortable she is. She has a cute, soft, slightly oversized cardigan on which she said was from some athletic type store, Fabletics or Athleta; a comfy yet form-fitting top (to give the outfit some pizzazz) from Lululemon, and of course a pair of the best quality leggings, also from Lululemon. She styled the outfit with a pair of New Balance shoes that draw the perfect line between athletic and casual. She was able to bump it up a notch by keeping her hair down and adding a noticeable layered necklace along with a pair of “ear crawler” earrings. I know for a fact she quite a few compliments on her outfit throughout the day and how cute she looked, and it was all athleisure! Way to rock this trend, Kelly.

There are a ton of interesting ideas out there about why athleisure took off so suddenly at this point in time rather than any other time in history, and even discussions on what this fashion trend says about modern culture and the way in which certain groups of people choose to embrace certain ideas rather than others. If you’re as invested in the clothing as I am and wonder any of these things, the The Atlantic article I linked would be a super interesting place to start!

The Atlantic article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/bicycle-bloomers-yoga-pants-how-sports-shaped-modern-fashion/574081/

Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andriacheng/2018/02/09/here-are-some-more-signs-athleisure-trend-still-has-legs/#65252e4f33cb