The whole Internet seems to be squealing over the fact that sportswear is permeating fashion like never before. Sweatshirts, track and sweatpants, beanies, jerseys, fleece jackets, neoprene and, of course, the omnipresent sneaker have become the lingua hipsta for designers high and low, big and small, streetwear and couture.
The funny thing is that sportswear is actually permeating fashion as ever before. (See what I did there?) Tommy Hilfiger and DKNY did jerseys in the '90s and Geoffrey Beene did sequin jersey gowns and minidresses in the '60s. Norma Kamali put sweatpants on the runway in the '80s. Look at the most iconic items of clothing from the past century: The sportcoat (the father of all modern tailored clothing) in its tweedy beginnings was a riding and shooting coat, the bikini something you swim in, the miniskirt lets you run. Women started wearing pants when they started riding bicycles.
All that is a bit simplified, perhaps, but what I mean to underscore is this: Quoting from sportswear and borrowing its visual motifs is nothing groundbreaking. The most interesting thing about fashion looking so studiously at sportswear isn't that it's happening, but that every time it's happened before it has meant something BIG. Fashion is all about change, but it's usually reactionary: big shoulders yesterday, tiny shoulders today, no shoulders tomorrow. Shoulders don't get better, just different. When sportswear enters the game, though, it tends to mean something is shifting, usually irreversibly.
So what's it mean now? Perhaps most notable is the fact that people are buying the actual sportswear instead of the fashionized version of it. If designers want to do sportswear, they have to make it in some way authentic, credible. When Riccardo Tisci wants to really do a sneaker, he works with Nike, rather than going it alone as he has in the past. Women are straight up wearing Lululemon, not some based-on-a-true-yoga-pant from Jil Sander or whatever. This extends to other trends that are cousins of sportswear too: People are buying real Birkenstocks, not the imitation that Barneys is selling next to it.
And this isn't just a joke that lives on Twitter. Whereas apparel sales have stayed relatively flat over the past year, sales of workout clothes have gone up 8%.
It'd be ridiculous to think this all means that people are going to, like, abandon fashion (though that has amazing hashtag potential). But it may suggest that the old paradigm—in which sportswear used to have the idea, and fashion would use its magic powers to make it into something larger, grander and more permanent—is about to get completely turned around.
Rachel Seville is a writer living in New York who believes in miracles. Read her blog, Pizza Rulez, here and follow her on Twitter here.
