High fashion takes notes from sportswear
Once you had to choose between looking fashionable or sporty. The modern woman can be both
At his couture show for Chanel in January, Karl Lagerfeld sent his models down the catwalk sporting the very best the atelier had to offer - paired with sneakers. Lagerfeld followed up his style statement with yet more sneakers in his Chanel-themed autumn-winter collection, setting the tone for an extremely sporty 2014.
Lagerfeld has not been alone in turning to activewear for inspiration on the fashion front. Kenzo, Isabel Marant, Saint Laurent and Alexander Wang, among many others across the spectrum, have been responding to our need for practical pieces that suit our increasingly active lives. Gone are the days when you had to choose between being sporty and stylish - now there is a whole fashion system that caters to being both.
Chief among those answering this need are a group of online retailers set up to serve this niche. They include Net-a-Sporter, the new activewear focused section at Net-a-Porter, and Mode Sportif, the Australian e-commerce site that owner Deborah Symond launched last year to address her desire for a wardrobe that served all aspects of her life.
"I started to mix my favourite fashion focused activewear with key leisurewear pieces, my go-to leggings styled with luxurious basics, wearing slides to and from yoga and working fashion sneakers with an active or sports luxe look for the weekend," she says.
"The Mode Sportif style of dressing is a lifestyle, and I saw a gap in the market to deliver a designer edit of both leisurewear and activewear to define off-duty dressing for the modern woman."