Is Workout Wear Finally Out?

Last week, SNL UK hopped on their broadcast and roasted SNL US host Shane Gillis for his monologue. You know the one, where he talked about going to the gym (questionable), and seeing women dressed like “wh**e” in scrunch shorts. It was despicable, but he may have actually hit on something.

Hold on- hear me out.

In 2021, which is when I began to take fitness seriously, I owned just one sports bra. It’s unlike me to not find an excuse for shopping, but I didn’t want to invest in attire that — in my mind — would not be seen, and only served a practical purpose. That soon changed. I fell headfirst into running, then lifting culture, and as my hobbies expanded so, too, did my algorithm. I lived in Los Angeles, where it was perfectly appropriate for workout-wear to double as public attire. And so I drifted further from my ‘real’ wardrobe, which had been a passion project for many years.  found myself purchasing haul after haul of activewear, an assortment that I rotated gleefully. A lot of it was even kind of pinchy, or impractical for the activity at hand, but that didn’t really matter to me. I wore athletic clothes because it made getting dressed easy, and, well, I could.

Then, this summer, I went to Paris on an extended trip. The French may have a famously loose approach to alcohol consumption, or monogamy, but they’re stringent about dress codes — specifically rejecting workout-wear in public. During my stint in the 16th arrondissement (which is less tourist-y) I could count on being spoken to in French until I opened my mouth. It’s so en francais that I can actually recall the sole time a Parisian pharmacist in the 16th led with “hello, can I help you?” before I said a word. I was post-workout, wearing sneakers, shorts and a hoodie. It took me a beat, but I made the connection: she assumed, from how I was dressed, that I wasn’t French. The following week, a friend and I went for a hike, before re-entering an urban area in our leggings. “God, we look so embarrassing,” she muttered. 

The experience changed my personal approach to workout-wear, completely. I rejected sneakers on public outings, unless absolutely necessary. Happening upon a hanging rack of 2€ cotton tanks and capris at a dollar store, I bought four different colors, working out exclusively in the threadbare cotton or loose Adidas shorts. I personally found lightweight, stretchy cotton far more comfortable than being mummified in spandex.

Returning to Los Angeles, I vowed not to regress to business-as-usual (that is, opting for my ol’ Spandex collection to workout and work and run errands), but imagined I would be alone in this rejection of workoutwear. Yet, to my surprise, there’s been a shift. In my pilates class today, a girl in baby blue shorts asked me where I got my workout set from — the same cotton tank and capris. I had no choice but to apologetically utter the word “Paris,” followed by, “but they were only 2€ each!!” We shared a brief back-and-forth about how comfortable the set is, before she concluded, knowingly: “Cotton is back. It’s more breathable.”

The athletic-wear revolution has been happening slowly. First, via trend reporters advising girls to forgo skin-tight activewear for the more ‘transitional attire’ of the 2000s — as seen on Tracy Anderson’s then-clique of celeb clients. Then, in the growing popularity of vintage styles (a ‘90s Nike set goes for around $150 a set on most resale sites), which has reintroduced forgotten styles like gaucho pants into the conversation. All of it is certainly more versatile out of an exercise context, and I feel less lazy, and significantly more cool, letting it take me from A to B.

In the same way the return of smoking/drinking has been intellectualized as the rejection of industrialized wellness, and therefore, a kind of reclamation of self in the face of ebbing autonomy, this feels like an en masse rejection the over-commodified, overcomplicated restrictiveness of modern fitness trends. We don’t want a new set every week. We don’t want to pay exorbitant membership prices to pick up a dumbbell or perform the 100s. We don’t want to macro-max. 

Now, this movement may not be enough to bring down Big Athletic-wear, and hell, I’m not sure I even want to. Cotton absorbs moisture without wicking, making it tough for high-intensity workouts. It cannot be substituted for polyester in certain garments, like sports bras, which are by necessity more performance-focused. But I am inspired by a new dawn and distancing myself from the aesthetic identity of clean-girl gym bunny or pilates princess. I’m so committed to the bit I voluntarily wore jeans — instead of the usual flared leggings — on a 20-hour travel day recently.

In this modern, friction-less life, resubscribing to an old etiquette taboo like workout-wear-should-be-for-working-out, feels not only refreshing, but kind of punk…almost as if choosing the more challenging path is more rewarding. Maybe if Shane Gillis really did go to the gym these days, he’d see less scrunch shorts and more fun, unconventional workout wear. Though, cotton capris don’t give ‘wh**e’ as conveniently.