Sports luxe, explained

“Sports luxe” is the fashion-press label for a simple idea: sportswear shapes, such as the bomber, the hoodie, the track pant and the trainer, made or styled with the polish of luxury clothing. It sits close to athleisure, the broader trend of athletic clothing worn as everyday wear, but leans further towards the catwalk. In August 2016, for example, GQ China ran a menswear editorial titled “Sports Luxe” built around bomber jackets from Dsquared2, Ami, Maison Margiela and Ports 1961, styled with turtlenecks, hoodies and slim trousers.

To understand why the look feels both new and familiar, it helps to know how long sportswear has been sliding into everyday dress.

A century of sportswear going casual

The tracksuit was designed to keep athletes warm before and after competition, and was taken off before the event. It was also one of the earliest uses of synthetic fibres in sportswear. Key steps, as recorded in Wikipedia’s articles on the tracksuit and athleisure:

The British story

In the UK the tracksuit has a particularly layered history. Wikipedia notes that its popularity was boosted by images such as the 1968 Olympic Black Power salute of Tommie Smith and John Carlos and by Bob Marley’s Jamaican tracksuit. In the 1980s it became the uniform of young working-class men at football matches, and so, in some media, a shorthand for hooliganism. From the early 2000s it was closely associated with grime; mainstream coverage linked it to gang culture, a connection that artists such as Stormzy have pushed back against.

That history matters to sports luxe. Part of the look’s energy comes from taking clothes that were once used to stereotype people and presenting them as luxury.

Fabrics and fashion cycles

Materials have changed with each wave. Early tracksuits were cotton, polyester, terry towelling or blends; velour became the dominant tracksuit fabric in the late 1970s; and shiny nylon shell suits briefly took over in the late 1980s. Tracksuits came back in polyester in the late 1990s, velour returned in the 2000s, and after falling out of fashion in the late 2000s the whole category returned in the 2010s on the athleisure wave.

Designers enter the field

Designer involvement gave the trend its “luxe”. Since 2006, prominent fashion designers have created tracksuits for national Olympic teams. Ralph Lauren designed the USA opening-ceremony uniforms for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and Stella McCartney became creative director of Adidas’s Team GB kit for London 2012, the first time a leading designer had done this for a country’s entire Olympic and Paralympic team.

The market behind it

Athleisure became big business. Wikipedia cites estimates of about US$35 billion in US sales in 2014, an 8% rise on the year before, and roughly US$270 billion globally in 2016 including footwear. Celebrities including Beyoncé and Rihanna promoted the look, and the pandemic years of 2020–21 pushed comfortable clothing further into daily life.

Putting the look together

The trick is contrast: one sporty piece, everything else sharp.

Drawing on how editorials such as the 2016 GQ China story styled it, sports luxe usually works by mixing registers rather than wearing head-to-toe gym kit:

• One hero sports piece, typically a bomber jacket, a quality hoodie or a track pant with a clean line.
• Tailored or slim companions: a fine-gauge turtleneck, slim trousers or a structured coat.
• Elevated fabrics such as wool, heavier jersey or technical fabrics with a matte finish, rather than shiny polyester.
• Clean trainers rather than worn-in running shoes.

The approach is a style choice, not a rule. Its appeal is that it borrows the comfort of sportswear without losing the sense that the outfit was put together on purpose.