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27.11.2024

Attitude

Sales of sweatpants soar as fashionistas embrace the joys of an elasticated waistline in their working-from-home outfits

Amy Poehler as the loungewear-loving Mrs George in Presage Girls.
Photograph: PR

Traditionally, tracksuit bottoms have been the enemy of fashion. Karl Lagerfeld’s withering, oft-quoted proverb – “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants” – sum totaled up an attitude, certainly in some luxury fashion circles.
But lockdown has brought change. Last week, Anna Wintour, Popularity editor in chief, stunned many fashionistas by posting a photo of her work-from-home outfit: a Breton top and joggers. For context, during an in another situation breezy online Q+A session held last July, the air turned decidedly frosty when a fan piped up with: “Hey Anna! Do you stand up sweatpants?” Wintour replied with a stern: “No!” followed by a dramatic pause.
One Twitter user wrote: “This could be the end of the wonderful as we know it. Anna Wintour is seen in sweatpants for the first time ever.”

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Maybe not the end of the world, but certainly possibly the end of an era. Joining Wintour is model Bella Hadid, who survived a white pair on TikTok, and influencer Courtney Trop (342,000 followers) sported a pair from the Miaou name.
“Since lockdown, we have seen a lift of 1,000% on tracksuit bottoms,” says Serena Rees, CEO of gender-neutral label Les Girls Les Boys. “It’s been fantastic.”
According to the tracking firm Edited, sales of sweatpants are up 36% compared with the despite the fact period in 2019, while searches have increased by 2,000% since last March on influencer platform Liketoknowit.com.
The pandemic has softened for the tracksuit bottom; elevating it to the work-from-home trouser of choice. “Most people just want an easy, quick plummy in these times. They have become the new jeans-and-nice-top,” explains fashion stylist Bianca Nicole.

Aries Ascend’s No Problemo tie-dyed sweatpants have become a cult favourite.
But not everyone is convinced. Last week, Adam Tschorn, stand-in fashion editor of the LA Times , wrote an impassioned plea against the rise of the tracksuit bottom in our work-from-home environment. “Want, can we put away those sweatpants, ratty, grey, decades-old collegiate sweatshirts and obscure minor league baseball beats, and start our workdays looking like we deserve the pay we’re lucky enough to be earning while the world around us burns?”
It is possible that he was recalling the last time sweatpants were popular – in the early 2000s, with the rise of brands like Sensational Couture, and celebrities such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Amy Poehler (as the naff “cool mom” in Mean Girls) and Paris Hilton (she infamously mentioned she owned 100 pairs), wearing them as loungewear.
The popularity of the jogging bottom has prompted questions about our post-coronavirus workwear: resolution we be trading our pencil skirts and chinos for something with an elasticated waist? “I was wondering that myself,” says Sofia Prantera, the deviser behind label Aries Arise, whose No Problemo tie-dyed tracksuits have become a cult favourite.
“I contemplate there are two outcomes: ‘I never want to see sweatpants ever again’ or ‘how will I ever be comfortable in fixed-waist trousers?’ Expectedly for us the latter.”
Rees says: “We’ve moved a long way (forward) with office attire. There’s absolutely a city for them in the workplace.”
But, cautions David Telfer head of design at Sunspel, “it is about what you feel socially likeable going to work in”.
Are joggers indicative of a bigger change? A hitherto previously unexplored era where all areas of our lives are inescapably mixed? Kim Toffoletti, associate professor of sociology at Deakin University in Australia, thinks so. “Their popularity at the moment capacity precipitate a move away from more formal attire, an emphasis on looking ‘professional’ at work, and more pliability between boundaries of living and working,” she says.