If you haven’t heard of the term “athleisure”, it is a trend that you have probably noticed but hasn’t registered in your brain, yet. There had been quite a debate about whether it will outlive 12 months when it emerged a few years ago, and it had proved quite a few spectators wrong. Many major retailers these are jumping on the bandwagon for a slice in the rapidly growing market, whilst the rest of the retail sales in fashion industry is flat or even suffering from continual loss of market share.
For obvious reasons we can tell why young workers across the globe are being drawn into this style: it’s comfortable yet practical, you easily commute from work to gym wearing the same outfits without having to carry a massive gym bag. Both men and women look cool and vibrant wearing their work out pants, those with edgy design in particular, ie. mesh pants or mesh hoodies. Yet there might one more factor that most commentators haven’t touched, the ever fastest evolving way of how office workers dress their business attires. We used to actually dress up for work. Look at our parents’ generation, back in the 60’s, ladies put on full on feminine dresses with gloves, gentleman wear hats for heaven’s sake – seriously when was the last time you saw a guy at work wearing hats? Exactly.
These days they can’t even be bothered to button up their shirts!
Then it came the days when women stopped wearing gloves, thank goodness. And the time when we start wearing pants, a dress code that was considered highly inappropriate before. Now here we are, having casual Fridays in the 21st century. When typing this a scene kept popping in my head where I had a client meeting in my previous corporate job, on a Friday morning, one of my clients was sporting Converse white sneakers paired with skinny jeans (a guy), I was quite surprised to say the least. With internet blooming and more and more people start working for themselves rather than getting a corporate job, casual style of clothes will only get bigger and win over more followers with it’s versatility and trendy outlook.