Fitness has slowly taken a firm grasp into mainstream fashion with more and more people in America becoming concerned about their lifestyle, wanting to earn money through social media spaces, or willing to make a positive influence in society! This has given rise to the trade of sports wear in general and the subset has made considerable jumps in the US fashion industry. In fact, some statistics have even claimed that the global fitness fashion industry could be contributing somewhere around $231 billion worldwide, by the year 2024.
This blog is going to take that into consideration, tracking the growth of athleisure fashion into consideration and looking into some of possible reasons that could have led to its enormous jump. According to Euromonitor International, US sportswear and footwear sales summed up to around $ 70,000 million in 2010 and grew to a whopping $ 97144 million in 2015 and it continues to grow further without any sign of slowing down. Amidst all these great numbers and the general trends, here’s why the fashion industry in the United States is embracing athleisure –
The Fashion has plenty of options
Variety is paramount for any style to become a regular part of the fashion industry and athleisure hits the bull’s eye in every respect. From joggers, t shirts, tank tops, leggings, and compression wear among others, there is plenty to pick and choose from to keep your wardrobe new and away from monotony. Not just apparel variation, there is plenty of colors and design variations as well within each apparel and that is what makes it such a phenomenon as a part of the style industry.
It banks on comfort before style and not style before comfort
While everyone likes to dress well and take care of themselves, it becomes quite a burden when what you want to wear doesn’t make you feel very comfortable. However, with athleisure fashion enthusiasts, that is far from the case. Since all of these are manufactured in essence as fitness and sports wear, their functionality and comfort are paramount to producers. This is what has given it the kind of mass appeal required to make stat chart bars grow every quarter and a wholesale fitness wear manufacturer has been able to bank on a large part of that success.
Athleisure is extremely versatile
Packing in the variation gives a dressing style another added advantage, versatility. People around street corners are wearing it as part of their day wear, casual Fridays, office outings and excursions, universities, late night parties, gyms, and the sports courts. No other type of clothing can boast of such usable versatility and that is exactly what makes this genre more than one shot hit and grow into something of a cult.
The income opportunities
From the 1990’s to around 2005, the fitness industry was mostly resonating with athletes who wanted to be big, ripped, and strong – and were ready to go to any lengths to get there. However, in the past decade, the frustration of the fitness mass that had pent up because of the complete lack of body aesthetics finally burst into a productive scene with physique models setting out to travel back into the limelight and take center stage. With aesthetics back as the pinnacle of a good body, more men and women could finally connect to it and wanted to become the best version of their self.
This was hard but not impossible. The middle-class youth did have the money but didn’t have the time as they were trying to set up their own careers. All of that changed with the advent of fitness blogging and eventually into what we have today – fitness vlogging. This started to become a coveted income source as more and more young men and women started giving tips and advice on how to get fit and backed it with their Adonis bodies. It landed them with advertisements and product placements, finally making it a job that had fame, glamour, and a healthy lifestyle to it. All the elements that anyone could ever want.
Some of these new public influencers and fitness models even went out to start their own supplementation and private label fitness wear brands – the journey from having a good body and fitness being a major hobby to a profession that could give you the good life – everything including the unadulterated attention of the opposite sex – was finally complete!
The Mass Hysteria
Every fashion sensibility has to have a mass hysteria to become what athleisure has become today. This comes from having role models who have everything the people or youth could ever want and therefore give birth to an admiration that makes them want to dress like them. It happened in the ‘60s rock and roll and the late 80’s grunge, and it’s happening today with athleisure.
Men and women around the country are deifying these new age sensations and modelling themselves after them to the toe. Everything is all the more intense that ever was before because of the constant need of community proof that social media handles have us hungering for. And then of course, there is the latent dream of one day becoming one of them, doing what you love, and getting rich at the same time – an experience that very few people get to understand.
All of these things have combined together to mark the rise of the athleisure way and there are wholesale activewear manufacturers are coming up everyday. This fashion sensibility has finally reached a stage where one can safely say – you can love it, you can hate it, but you damn well cannot ignore it!