Athleisure is no longer confined to streetwear brands—modern women want luxury when they move
Gone are the days when a woman in search of a gym kit would be limited to tighter-fitting, pink versions of the male offering. Legacy athleisure brands like Adidas have stepped up their shoe game—their Sambas dance off the track—while a plethora of brands have cropped up to fill the sartorial void, from Lululemon to Alo Yoga.
Yet until now, most of these brands sat firmly in the streetwear space, and relied on one-off designer collaborations—hello, 2015 NikeLab x Sacai—that fuelled the sneaker drop frenzy. But what we’re seeing today—and will continue to see for years to come—is athletic luxury planting its flag in the fashion lexicon as a category in its own right. Rather than just hopping on a passing fad like gorpcore or balletcore, discerning shoppers are looking to brands that combine style and performance, and are not willing to compromise on either pursuit.
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The launch of athleisure line NikeSkims in 2025 was major news. (Photo: courtesy of NikeSkims)
“There’ve been a lot more female voices in the s sportswear field, and this female take on sportswear is really important,” says celebrated Danish designer Cecilie Bahnsen, who recently launched her second collaboration with The North Face. It’s important, she says, “to get their lens, because they know what we really want to wear and are able to add a bit of femininity to a technical universe.”
Last year saw a record-number of brands entering the athleisure category, with one of the buzziest being NikeSkims, which launched globally on September 26. The skin-tight sets, which promise “strategic sculpting” using Nike’s Dri-Fit performance technology awash in underwear brand Skims’ signature palette of nudes, felt like a partnership that was a long time coming; but it also signalled the growing demand for fashion that blurred the lines between form and function.
“Our client expects their wardrobe to flow from a match to an off-court meeting, and athleisure has evolved to meet that need,” says Kristina Romanova, CEO of Aman Essentials, the lifestyle arm of Aman Resorts that recently launched Aman Tennis Club, alongside a fashion collection in 2025. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen our guests embrace movement as an essential part of their well-being rituals—whether that’s sunrise yoga overlooking the desert or a quiet rally on the courts at Amanpuri in Phuket. They want high-performance fabrics that breathe and move beautifully, but with a silhouette that feels timeless.”
Athleisure from Aman Essentials, the lifestyle arm of Aman Resorts. (Photo: courtesy of Aman Essentials)
Athleisure from Aman Essentials, the lifestyle arm of Aman Resorts. (Photo: courtesy of Aman Essentials)
Sport is luxury’s next frontier—LVMH group began a 10-year, multi-brand partnership with Formula One in 2025—and with “wellness” being the top buzz word amongst Millennial and Gen Z audiences, the activewear and athleisure space is ripe for a renaissance. “The health trend is definitely growing, and it’s very noticeable that more and more people are craving fun and unique sportswear. After all, you can only buy so many black leggings,” says Wei Lin, co-founder of PH5, a New York-based contemporary women’s knitwear brand.
Lin, who comes from a family of knitwear manufacturers in China, uses whimsical patterns and innovative knitwear techniques in her designs for PH5. The brand’s name is taken from the numeric pH scale—ranging from 0 to 14, with 7 as neutral—which the designers have used to represent the unisex nature of their aesthetics that balance a sporty-approach to feminine styles. In 2020, it added PH5+ to its offerings, a range of activewear which the label has decided to expand in 2026.
Lin is an accomplished triathlete herself and ensures the pieces are as durable as they are stylish. “We have to make sure our activewear pieces can actually be worn to play sports, and we have tested our pieces over and over again to make sure that they are compressed enough and 60 stretchy enough for most low to mid intensity sports. I have worn our pieces during training and races.” Performance is where this new class of activewear pieces differ from their predecessors. Where once pieces might skew heavily towards style or function, the winning brands today are able to seamlessly accomplish both.
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Jane Gottschalk, the CEO of luxury skiwear brand Perfect Moment, says: “When we took over Perfect Moment 15 years ago, the ski market had largely forgotten its fashionable roots of the 1960s and 70s-think Brigitte Bardot, Jackie O and Audrey Hepburn, [or] Roger Moore and Richard Burton on the terraces of Gstaad. Brands were limited in colours, silhouettes were masculine and focused on extreme, technical capabilities.
“With the development of modern technical fabrics, with stretch, movement and protection, we were able to bring back the fashionable element to the sport and marry performance and style. The market has exploded with this trend, with most brands now referencing ski as part of their design calendar. Customers now expect their clothing to be effortlessly stylish and function flawlessly,” adding there is also a strong focus on longevity and versatility, and the need for pieces that work for a consumer's entire lifestyle.
In the same vein, Cecilie Bahnsen’s latest creations for The North Face might look voluminous and otherworldly, but the down jackets are still made to withstand extreme temperatures. “We’ve had to undergo strict quality control, so even though it’s a floral jacket, you can still hike in it and do all the things you were meant to do in it; it’s not just a fashion item,” says Bahnsen. “It’s really been a meeting of two nerds and finding a universe in between.”
Olympic hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in Oakley x Meta sunglasses. (Photo: courtesy of Oakley)
The brands that are one step ahead are those willing to lean into technological innovation, understanding that the sportswear arena is a prime playground for experimentation. The intersection of fashion and performance, says Gottschalk, continues to be one of the most dynamic spaces in design.
Sunglasses brand Oakley’s collaboration with tech giant Meta has been plastered across billboards and metro ads, following the splashy Ray Ban x Meta collab that flooded the Coperni runway in March. The glasses, worn in the campaigns by sport legends from football star Kylian Mbappé to Olympic hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, are meant to provide athletes with real-time personalised performance insights, ushering in an era of “Athletic Intelligence”.
The potential for the use of technology in the field is infinite, but these designers are leaning in. PH5, for example, has employed the use of avant-garde fabrics, like yarns that are UV reactive, flashlight reflective and hyaluronic 62 acid-infused, redefining the relationship between technology and fashion. “I want to take PH5+ to a level that can offer different compression intensities to different muscle groups-and body cooling yarns would be cool,” says Lin. Meanwhile, Bahnsen is excited for its sustainable applications. “In fabric, we should be more forward-thinking and discover ways to further sustainability practices and upcycling where we can, and I think technology will be a huge part of cracking these obstacles,” she says.
Looks from Haider Ackermann’s Snow Goose by Canada Goose. (Photo: courtesy of Canada Goose)
An outfit from Haider Ackermann’s Snow Goose by Canada Goose. (Photo: courtesy of Canada Goose)
But beyond products, the brands currently capturing the hearts of audiences are the ones that recognise sport as a collective ritual-be it trainer brands like On or Nike that excel at harnessing community events like run clubs; or Alo, which took over the Mandarin Oriental in the fashionable Turkish town of Bodrum with a beach club offering wellness sessions led by Alo instructors, including yoga, meditation, sound healing and outdoor workouts. For brands built on the premise of movement and lifestyle, getting audiences to feel transported to a holistic world through activations and campaigns is crucial to their longevity.
Not long after being named creative director of Canada Goose in 2024—he also became creative director of Tom Ford later in the same year—cult designer Haider Ackermann released Snow Goose by Canada Goose, a capsule of posh, polar pieces. As part of the release, the brand beloved for its luxury parkas hosted expeditions to the remote expanse of Churchill in Canada’s Manitoba province, where guests stalked the frozen tundra for polar bears and met with Indigenous communities. The general public may not have been able to partake in the adventure, but the campaign effectively communicated the brand's sense of place and values wrapped up in a luxurious snow globe.
Perfect Moment, which launched urban, ready-to-wear pieces and swimwear this year, partnered with the Alpine Formula One team, demonstrating the brand's values beyond ski. “A partnership with Alpine was obviously a natural fit both in the name and shared heritage rooted in the French Alps,” says Gottschalk. “F1 brings the same sense of precision, energy and performance that's always been at the heart of Perfect Moment. It also helps us tap into a more male-oriented audience as we expand back into the brand’s original male heritage.”
Today, when a woman buys her puffer or leggings, the item needs to evoke an entire lifestyle that she aspires to, from the heritage hotel group she wants to stay at to the smoothie she craves after a workout. Women have proven they can do it all—all they’re asking for is a hardworking wardrobe that can keep up.
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