Athleisure: A qualitative investigation of a multi-billion-dollar clothing trend

Clothes play a ubiquitous, yet under-appreciated social role. In the context of body image, clothes may both reflect and facilitate wearers' ideals and anxieties about their physical appearance. Athleisure, referring to athletic-inspired workout apparel that explicitly accentuates wearers' physiques, is a hitherto unexamined clothing trend worth tens of billions of dollars annually (and growing) in the United States consumer market alone. We conducted the first qualitative examination of athleisure by interviewing 20 women who regularly wore athleisure. Four master themes emerged from the data: (1) the athleisure lifestyle, (2) the conditional nature of athleisure, (3) athleisure embodiment, and (4) athleisure-linked cognitive dissonance. Our results suggest that wearing athleisure communicates to others an adherence to the lifestyles depicted in fitspiration - a class of social media imagery that glorifies thin-fit bodies. Participants articulated that athleisure encouraged them to feel more confident and athletic; athleisure also emphasized the women's physiques, and whether they aligned with the thin-fit ideal. Thus, the act of wearing athleisure motivated participants to engage in fitspiration-based activities. Given the (a) massive public demand for athleisure, and (b) industry projections for continued growth in athleisure spending, our findings compel additional research on the connections between clothing and body image.