The Athleisure Race Heats Up

HEAD INTO ALMOST any large city at the moment and you will be witness to a simple fact: We are all in love with athleisure.

That is the conclusion it would be hard not to draw based on the likes of Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Under Armour, JD Sports, Puma and on and on. Wherever you choose to turn another “flagship” has been opened (in former times a flagship led a fleet of smaller ships, but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore – anything over a certain size is usually deemed a “local flag”) and on opening days there are usually pictures of cash-happy teen shoppers besieging a store in search of one-off sneakers and kit that has been made appropriate to a location.

In fairness, this sort of thing is not restricted to youth. Mature shoppers do more or less the same thing, the difference being that they can probably afford to consume in this manner.

The point in all of this is that there does appear to be something of an emerging athleisure template. This involves a lot of screens showing toned individuals going through the sporty motions, the inference being that you too can be like this if you opt to inspect the merchandise displayed in the frequently overtly industrial interiors that tend to characterize the sector.

At the better end, there are of course those who use well-finished and glossy wood (think New Balance) rather than black metal to get the slick point across, but this does not mean that the message is any less clear. If you want fashion – look, dress and shop like an athlete. The fact, of course, that very few of us measure up to this ideal does not stop retailers from persuading is that anything is possible.

Whether a point will be reached when shoppers tire of all of this us a moot point, but for the moment at least our high streets are temples of track and field activity. Sorta.