It used to be simple – if you were in a gym, or increasing your metabolic rate by any significant margin, you were going to be wearing – or forgiven if caught in – something comfortable, stretchy and hard-wearing. Or at least that is what common sense would have dictated a few decades ago.
Today, that which used to be reserved for tennis courts, polo fields and sporting arenas is so prevalent in our daily clothing choices we don’t even notice. Not convinced? Think Converse trainers, Lacoste and Polo t-shirts, not to mention the Adidas track pants and running shoes just for a trip to the grocery store.
The streets of Hong Kong and Macau are awash with men and women, both young and not so young, sporting (if you'll forgive the pun) Polo t-shirts. This well-known wardrobe staple is also known as a golf shirt and tennis shirt, and long before Ralph Lauren included his “polo shirt” as part of his original line called Polo in 1972, the French seven-time Grand Slam tennis champion Rene Lacoste decided that the stiff tennis attire of the day was too cumbersome and uncomfortable.
He set about designing a short-sleeved, loosely-knit piqué cotton shirt with an unstarched, flat, protruding collar. As the American press had begun to refer to him as “The Crocodile”, in 1927 Lacoste placed a crocodile emblem on the left breast of his shirts. The rest, as they say, is history. However, due to the immense popularity of Lauren’s clothing, a majority of English-speaking westerners began to refer to Lacoste’s tennis shirt as a “polo shirt” and to this day the term remains common currency for many people the world over.
Another case in point is Converse trainers, seen on everyone from Drew Barrymore to off-duty models. Kristen Stewart has been seen in them on the Hollywood red carpet, sealing the fashionable deal for this unlikely contender for glamorous footwear.
In one of the most improbable of fashion fairy tales, it all came to be in 1921, when a basketball player named Charles H. “Chuck” Taylor walked into Converse, complaining of sore feet. He was offered a job and worked as an ambassador promoting the shoes around the United States. In 1932, Taylor’s signature was added to the All Star patch on the classic, high-topped trainers.
Fast forward to the 1970s when different colours and materials such as leather, suede, vinyl and even hemp started being used alongside the traditional canvas, and today the rubber-soled basketball trainer has secured its fashion legacy, having even appeared in the pages of Vogue.
Today fashion and sport are big business, and consumers want to associate themselves with a brand that will give them a look which ultimately reflects their personalities, and attracts the attention of others. Multinational sportswear company Puma tapped into this in 2000 when they hooked up with one of the original supermodels, Christy Turlington, to collaborate on the Puma-produced yoga and sportswear line, Nuala.
Every yoga-loving, fashion conscious woman worth her elk was keen to be associated with the brand and all that it stood for. Although Turlington is a healthy-living, yoga fan, she was also the face of Calvin Klein for ten years and dominated the pages of the biggest fashion magazines for decades. Her name and face will forever be associated with fashion, no matter how many downward dog poses she assumes.
In the beginning sportswear crept into our day-to-day wardrobes almost by accident, without us really noticing. But fashion is not one to take things lying down and its crossover to the other side of this clothing divide has been at times subtle, but irrefutable. If sportswear was going to become part of our daily ensembles, then fashion was very definitely going to take its logos beyond catwalks and the pages of Vogue.
One of the best examples of this happened not so long ago, when one of the fashion pack’s biggest names stepped into the changing rooms of one of the world’s most iconic sporting events. Known for her jumpsuits and easy-to-wear separates, Stella McCartney was asked to design the athletic uniforms for the 2012 Summer Olympics, one of the biggest sporting events on the planet.
In a project that took place over two years, McCartney designed 590 different items of clothing, all created to maximise the athletes’ efficiency in their various disciplines. The designer said that form was just as important a consideration as function as she planned the kit. Speaking of the athletes she said: “they say ‘If I feel that I look good it will enhance the way I perform’” – a meeting between aesthetics and athletics, if ever there was one.
But long before the offspring of one of the Beatle’s dressed Olympic athletes, supermodels merged with sportswear multinationals and actresses wore basketball trainers to red-carpet film premiers, fashion and sport understood that theirs could be a mutually beneficial relationship and that form and function could meet in a beautiful, and fashionable, manner. Have you ever seen a Chanel surfboard?