Sportswear: From Function to Fashion

Sportswear became fashion through a long series of steps. It started as purpose-built kit for athletes in the late 1800s, escaped the sports field through 1970s jogging culture, was pushed into music and street style in the 1980s, and finally merged with everyday clothing when stretch fabrics and relaxed dress codes arrived. Today it is simply what most people wear.

Where sportswear started

Before the late nineteenth century, there was no such thing as sports clothing. People played sport in whatever they normally wore, which for women meant long skirts and corsets.

Organised sport changed that. As cycling, tennis and athletics became popular pastimes, clothing had to allow movement. Early tennis and cricket whites, cycling bloomers and swimming costumes were the first garments designed around a physical activity rather than social convention.

The bicycle deserves particular credit. Cycling was one of the first sports women took up in large numbers, and it made restrictive dress genuinely impractical. The clothing reform that followed had effects well beyond sport.

The first sportswear brands

The early twentieth century brought companies built specifically around athletic clothing and footwear.

Rubber-soled canvas shoes arrived and gained the name sneakers, because the soles were quiet enough to sneak in. Tennis players began putting their names to shirts. Football boots, running spikes and swimwear all became specialist products with specialist makers.

These items were still firmly functional. Nobody wore tennis clothes to town. The line between sports kit and normal clothing was clear, and it stayed that way for decades.

The 1970s: sportswear leaves the field

The jogging boom is the moment sportswear escaped sport. Running went from a niche pursuit to a mass activity, and millions of people bought tracksuits and running shoes for the first time.

What mattered was that they kept wearing them afterwards. A tracksuit was comfortable, and once you had one, wearing it to run errands was an easy step. Sportswear started appearing in ordinary daily life.

Aerobics accelerated this in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Leotards, leggings and legwarmers became visually iconic and moved rapidly into mainstream fashion, worn by people who had never taken a class.

The 1980s and 1990s: street style takes over

Hip-hop culture did more for sportswear’s fashion status than any marketing campaign. Tracksuits, sneakers and sports branding became central to a musical and cultural identity, and that identity was aspirational.

The Run-DMC and Adidas relationship is the well-known turning point: a group wearing a brand because they chose to, followed by a formal partnership. It established the template that sport and music endorsement still follow today.

Basketball footwear became a collecting culture in its own right, with shoes bought for status rather than for playing. At that point a piece of sports equipment had become a fashion object outright.

The 2000s and 2010s: athleisure arrives

Two changes made the final merge possible.

The first was fabric. Elastane, technical polyester and modern knitting made clothing that stretched, wicked sweat, held its shape and still looked good. Yoga pants, in particular, proved that performance clothing could be genuinely flattering.

The second was social. Dress codes relaxed across offices, air travel and restaurants. Once turning up in trainers was acceptable, comfort stopped costing you anything socially.

The term athleisure entered common use in the 2010s to describe the result: clothing designed to work for exercise and for everyday life at the same time. It was added to major dictionaries, which is a fair marker of when a word stops being industry jargon.

A quick timeline

Period	What changed
Late 1800s	First clothing designed for sport; cycling drives dress reform
Early 1900s	Specialist sportswear brands and rubber-soled sneakers appear
1970s	Jogging boom puts tracksuits into everyday life
1980s	Aerobics and hip-hop turn sportswear into fashion
1990s	Sneaker culture and sports branding go mainstream
2000s-2010s	Technical stretch fabric plus relaxed dress codes create athleisure
2020s	Remote work makes comfort-first clothing the default

Why athleisure became so popular

Several things happened to line up at once.

• Comfort stopped being a compromise. Technical fabric let clothing be comfortable and presentable at the same time.
• Health became a visible value. Wearing activewear signals a certain lifestyle, whether or not you exercise.
• Dress codes collapsed. Offices, airlines and restaurants relaxed what they expected.
• Remote work accelerated everything. Years of working from home reset what people consider normal to wear.
• It is efficient. One outfit covers the gym, errands and coffee, which suits a busy day.

Where the Gulf fits in

This history is usually told through a Western lens, but the region has its own version of it.

Traditional Gulf dress was already built around loose, breathable clothing suited to extreme heat, which is a functional design logic modern activewear arrived at independently. The idea that clothing should work with the climate rather than against it is not new here.

Sport participation across Saudi Arabia and the UAE has risen sharply in recent years, supported by national wellbeing programmes and a wave of new facilities. Padel is the clearest example, moving from almost unknown to mainstream in a handful of years.

That has created demand for activewear designed around local conditions: lighter fabrics, better ventilation, faster drying, and modest cuts that still perform in heat. Global ranges built for temperate climates handle this inconsistently, which is exactly the gap regional brands can fill.

What the history tells you about buying

The through-line across a century of sportswear is that function came first and fashion followed. The garments that lasted, from the tracksuit to the running shoe to the legging, all solved a real problem before they became stylish.

That is still the most useful buying rule. Pieces that genuinely perform tend to look better for longer, because good fabric holds its shape and colour. Pieces designed purely to look sporty tend to pill, fade and lose their shape quickly.

Choose fabric that suits what you actually do and where you live, keep the colours neutral if you want the pieces to work beyond the gym, and look after them properly. Our guides to sportswear fabrics and caring for gym clothes cover both.

If you want to know where this is all heading next, our piece on the future of athleisure picks up where this history ends. For building a wardrobe now, browse the women’s and men’s ranges.

Five moments that changed sportswear

The full story runs long. Five moments did most of the work.

• The bicycle. It made restrictive dress impractical for women.
• The rubber sole. It created the sneaker.
• The jogging boom. It put tracksuits into normal wardrobes.
• Hip-hop. It made sportswear aspirational rather than purely practical.
• Elastane. It let clothing stretch and still hold its shape.

Each one solved a real problem first. Fashion followed later.

Two myths worth correcting

Athleisure is often called new. It is not. The idea is more than a century old. Only the fabric is modern.

It also gets called lazy dressing. That misses the point. This clothing was built for hard physical use. The comfort came from function, not from giving up on how you look.

The bottom line

Sportswear became fashion over roughly 150 years, moving from purpose-built athletic kit to everyday clothing through jogging culture, aerobics, hip-hop and finally technical stretch fabric. The pattern repeated at every stage: something was designed to solve a practical problem, people found it comfortable, and it escaped its original context. That is worth remembering when buying, because the pieces built to perform are the ones that stay looking good.

Frequently asked questions

Where did athleisure originate?

Its roots go back to late-1800s sports clothing, but the modern form emerged from the 1970s jogging boom and 1980s aerobics culture, then merged with everyday clothing in the 2000s once technical stretch fabrics arrived. The word itself came into common use in the 2010s.

Why is athleisure so popular?

Technical fabric removed the trade-off between comfort and looking presentable. Dress codes relaxed at the same time, and remote work accelerated the shift. It is also efficient, since one outfit covers exercise, errands and casual plans.

What is the purpose of athleisure?

To work for exercise and everyday wear at once. The clothing uses performance fabric and construction, but is cut and coloured to look appropriate outside a gym, so it does two jobs instead of one.

When did sportswear become fashion?

The turning point was the 1970s and 1980s. The jogging boom put tracksuits into daily life, aerobics made leggings and leotards visually iconic, and hip-hop culture turned tracksuits and sneakers into genuine fashion items rather than sports equipment.

What is the difference between sportswear and athleisure?

Sportswear is designed primarily for athletic performance. Athleisure is designed to perform adequately while also looking appropriate for everyday settings. A cycling jersey is sportswear. A pair of neutral joggers you would wear to a café is athleisure.

Is athleisure here to stay?

Most signs point that way. It has become a permanent clothing category rather than a trend, comparable to how denim settled into wardrobes. What changes is the style within the category rather than whether people wear it.