The time has come to acknowledge the demise of a fashion staple: leggings. Sales are down, and even spiritual legging mecca Lululemon laid off 150 employees in June. First-hand accounts from London and New York suggest that holding onto sports clothes is a clear indicator of being out of touch with current fashion trends.<\/p>\n
When a 37-year-old friend asked Krissy Jones, owner of the ultra-cool yoga company Sky Ting, for her advice on leggings, she had a blunt response: \u201cWe don\u2019t wear leggings anymore.\u201d This sentiment is echoed by others, with some even going so far as to say, \u201cYou\u2019re a boomer if you wear leggings.\u201d Veteran fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley wrote in The Guardian earlier this year, \u201cI think leggings may be over.\u201d The trade bible, The Business of Fashion, reported in July, \u201cThe reign of leggings is over.\u201d<\/p>\n
In April, US retail analyst group Edited published a report titled The Death of Leggings? The report found that not only were sales declining, but major players such as Nike, Adidas, and Fabletics had significantly reduced their range of leggings, by an average of more than 50 percent. While leggings are still widely available, the writing is on the wall: they are no longer the fashion staple they once were.<\/p>\n
Leggings are now joining their middle siblings, skinny jeans and ankle socks, and suddenly look painfully dated. For two decades, extremely form-fitting pants dominated the fashion scene, but times have changed. Around 2005, leggings began to appear on street corners and in cafes around the world. In 2007, Lululemon went public and made over $450 million in one day. The tattered structural pants industry fell into mourning, with Levi\u2019s then-CEO saying in 2013, \u201cWe\u2019re in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the decade ended in December 2019, Vogue declared, \u201cLeggings…are the look of our times.\u201d However, times change, and fashion is cyclical. The ’90s and early 2000s are hot, and part of the natural tendency of youth is to reject whatever is dear to those in front of them. The painful ubiquity of leggings everywhere was deliciously satirized by Skitbox’s activewear, which gave us such everyday truths as "I have a hangover in my gym clothes."<\/p>\n
But I think there’s also something much meatier and more meaningful going on here. Leggings were a statement of a certain identity politics tied to the rise of Instagram and wellness culture. They signaled almond milk lattes, a warrior pose, and a certain worship of self-care and a desire to be seen drinking the green juice. Generation Z seems to be significantly less interested in this kind of performative nonsense.<\/p>\n
With the move away from leggings and the emergence of garments like the nap dress that can be worn for lounging, sleeping, or going out, Generation Z is putting comfort first and rejecting the expectations that the previous generation was under. Part of Generation Z’s shift away from the leggings narrative is that they refuse to conform. "Millennials were still influenced by the ‘beauty is pain’ mentality – inherited rules about how to dress and for what occasion," said Marsha Lindsay, founder of London Pilates studio Nobu.<\/p>\n
The BWP has emerged as a replacement for leggings – the large training pants. Think baggy, think hip-hugging, think Salt’N’Pepa in its heyday. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, searches for \u201cbaggy gym outfits\u201d on Pinterest have increased by more than 400 percent. Edited’s leggings report suggests the same, with terms like "boxy" and "loose" up more than 50 percent in the last year. As the young high priestess Shakira would say: Hips don’t lie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Decline of Leggings The time has come to acknowledge the demise of a fashion staple: leggings. Sales are down, and even spiritual legging mecca Lululemon laid off 150 employees in June. First-hand accounts from London and New York suggest that holding onto sports clothes is a clear indicator of being out of touch with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[175,21593,2382,8078,168,21591,411,2847,3862,443,21590,164,21592,2466,5877,2855,4629,2631,5491,2356,2048,3031,11989,170,5546,21595,669,21594,4878,2632],"class_list":{"0":"post-29036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lifestyle","8":"tag-adidas","9":"tag-almond-milk","10":"tag-beauty","11":"tag-bible","12":"tag-clothing","13":"tag-fabletics","14":"tag-fashion","15":"tag-generation-z","16":"tag-identity-politics","17":"tag-instagram","18":"tag-jess-cartner-morley","19":"tag-leggings","20":"tag-levi-strauss-co","21":"tag-lululemon-athletica","22":"tag-mecca","23":"tag-millennials","24":"tag-nike-inc","25":"tag-pilates","26":"tag-pinterest","27":"tag-self-care","28":"tag-shakira","29":"tag-slim-fit-pants","30":"tag-sock","31":"tag-sportswear","32":"tag-the-guardian","33":"tag-training-pants","34":"tag-trousers","35":"tag-virabhadrasana","36":"tag-vogue-magazine","37":"tag-yoga"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29038,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29036\/revisions\/29038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}