The Science of Leisurewear

Athleisure has been one of the biggest movements in fashion over the last few years, combining the aesthetics and aspirations of active sportswear, with some of the luxury design and materials of the traditional world of fashion. It’s thrived by making fitness an aesthetic, but more than many other fashion movements, its roots and future are in the world of science.

Some athleisure pieces focus on the luxury end of the spectrum, with soft materials and generous fits flattering the ‘leisure’ part of the name rather than the ‘athletic’ part. For athleisure that can work as exercise wear, designers need to draw on what’s happening with high end sportswear and bring it to their own designs.

With Adidas weaving titanium and aluminium spheres into its fabrics to help with cooling in its Climachill range, and Lululemon making their fashionable yoga-wear from bespoke, trademarked fabrics for better stretch and breathability, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. It’s not just sports inflected brands that are using high tech developments in their designs: The new British brand Ashmei are using high quality Merino wool for some truly luxurious feeling clothing that also fulfils the active promise of Athleisure. Carbon treated Merino wool is not a good insulator that helps keep you warm when it’s cold and cool when it’s hot, and it’s also got antibacterial properties that make the material a natural odour eater as well.

This is a great example of designers using bold new ideas, and traditional materials to create a clothing line that embodies the ideals of the Athleisure trend. A fashionable, luxury aesthetic using some of the latest developments in the sports-wear sphere to not keep the clothing up to date as exercise wear but also make it more environmentally friendly. As a natural fibre, responsibly farmed wool is far greener and more economically sustainable than mass produced synthetics, and sustainability is on the mind of today’s consumers more than ever.

Chinti and Parker, meanwhile, are using cashmere for their athleisure range, for a modern twist on classical comfort fashion.

These innovations begin in high end fashion, but then propagate down into mass market athleisure wear, so wherever you go for your athleisure fix, you can expect to see the influence of some cutting edge science and engineering on your clothes.