The Sportswear Industry Trend : Fshion and Innovation

        The Sportswear Trend : Fshion and Innovation

The Cross-Border Cooperation of Sport and Fashion Industry:

As Topshop’s creative director puts it, “We’re in a sportswear revolution at the moment. Fashion is really driven by what’s happening in the sportswear world, it’s at the top of the radar in the fashion stakes so to have Adidas Originals as a starting point was fantastic”. Fashion and sportswear have fused and the combination is an appealing mix for consumers. With sportswear appearing on the fashion catwalks, it’s time to reverse the trend and reconsider our workout wardrobes.

Let’s take an example of Adidas. Recently, Adidas Originals and the British high street brand Topshop teamed up to create a twenty piece spring-summer line of athletic inspired wear in 2014. And in the November, 2014, Adidas will released the new series which cooperated with the fashion designer Mary Katrantzou who are good at digital printing. In addition, Adidas also cooperate with Stella McCartney to design the new collections. Beside its fantastic design, the technology was also used : the organic cotton, recycled yarns and dry-dye technology. And Adidas invited Raf Simons, who owns his brand Raf Simons and the chef designer of Jil Sander since 2013. And the famous Adidas Y-3, which released the collection seasons by seasons, was also designed by the fashion designer YohjiYamamoto since 2001.

Wha’t more, Puma cooperated with the famous fashion designers Alexand McQueen Jil Sander and Mihara Yasuhiro. Nike also cooperated with the French Brand A.P.C.

Topshop x Adidas Originals

Sport brands get more fashion and innovation conscious.You can help but wonder why sport became so in fashion and innovation? There are three main reasons.

Firstly, the sportswear are not only wore for exercising activities, but also increasingly become a daily life part. People wear the sport clothes in the following situation: around the house, running errands,shopping,out to eat.

For the man who does the exercise 5 to 7 days a week spends about $38 on the athletic wears per month. And for the man who does not do the exercise regularly spends around $31 per month. Therefor, we can conclude that the demand for sportswear lifts and the market targets are not only on the exercising people who focus on the performance according to the top exercises they do, but also the non-exercising people who more pursue for the fashion style and design.

Secondly, the rise in popularity of fitness classes emerging globally, based around dance, yoga, ballet and Pilates, and with appealing branding, including Barre Body, Fitness Rave, Twerkshop. In the US, there has been 29% increase in yoga practice since 2008. In the fitness classes, most of them are women who prefer the sportswear in fashion style and design.

Lastly, it is about the notion of woman being active rather than passive. For instance, Nike wants women to sweat, move, dance and jump; in other words, live. That’s a notion that is reflected in a not obviously athletic way. The flat shoes make the women can move around at speed without breaking an ankle. They can work in comfort and cosy wearing the oversized sweaters and roomy tailored trousers replacing the boobs-out cocktail frocks.

The New Players ---The Sports Series in Apparel Brand :

Since January 2014, the new H&M Sport has expanded to cover more sporting activities, reflecting the increasingly active lifestyles of women, men and children. The collection more focused on performance, fit and designed with input from world-class professional athletes from the Swedish Olympic team. As a fast fashion apparel brand, H&M undoubtedly has more experience in design and style. And for its biggest rival in fast fashion, Zara has plenty of things H&M doesn’t—including about twice as many stores—but it’s still focused on fashion rather than fitness.

H&M Sport

The athletic apparel market is competitive. Not only H&M, but also the other fast fashion brand joined in this game, Uniqlo and Gap which now has both GapFit and Athleta, a separate brand aimed at active women, wrestle for market share with such all-stars as Nike and Adidas. Compared with the original sport brands, such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, the sport series in fast fashion brands have many advantages. First, the lower price. Second, fast products update. Thirdly, more extensive consumer groups.

Window displays for the «Sport of Life» campaign in London.

Edited By Mengdi LI

Source :

http://i-d.vice.com/en_au/read/think-pieces/5502/sportswearinnovationfashionstaples

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-05/h-and-m-turns-to-sportswear-to-make-zara-sweat

http://editd.com/blog/2014/03/the-sportswear-revolution/