Brands Are Desperate to Find the Athleisure Sweet Spot

An image from Misty Copeland’s campaign for Under Armour.

All those yoga pants you’ve bought, even though you don’t actually do yoga? They helped generate some $35 billion in sales last year, according to recent stats. Athleisure is a big, booming business, and a category that’s outstripping the growth of the larger apparel industry, thanks to a culture where it’s increasingly appropriate to wear on-trend ‘dress’ sweatpants and overpriced, performance-enhancing gear just about everywhere.

It’s a trend that’s minting money for a number of companies, from Gap’s Athleta label, which has grown even as Gap struggles to boost its overall sales, to Under Armour, which has been amping up its style cred lately with splashy campaigns starring models like Gisele Bunchden and fashionable athletes like Misty Copeland and Lindsey Vonn. But in an earnings call earlier this week, Under Armour’s CEO Kevin Plank said all the emphasis on marketing to women hadn’t yet translated into the kind of sales the company was hoping to see.

From Nike’s #BetterForIt campaign.

Under Armour still managed to generate about $600 million in proceeds from women’s gear last year, but those numbers paled in comparison to the $2 billion-plus the company makes off of its menswear. So why is the company not getting to the heart of what women want to wear right now? Plank says it’s because Under Armour has been making clothes designed for workouts, rather than focusing on streetwear and other categories. “We don’t believe we played our best game yet,“ Plank told investors on the call. Instead of just making excellent sports bras and bike shorts, he noted, Under Armour should be “more relevant beyond just strictly in the gym,” adding that he would “continue to take those steps towards being more relevant in more aspects of [women’s lives].”

With so much cash at stake, it’s no wonder brands are scrambling to figure out how to tap into the athleisure trend (and the women who buy into it). Nike recently rolled out a giant campaign aimed specifically at their female audience (though they’ve been targeting them for years) and even celebs like Beyonce have stepped into the fray, announcing the debut of a women’s athleisure line in collaboration with Topshop last fall. Earlier this spring, Kanye West made waves at New York Fashion Week when he presented his co-ed collection with Adidas, to much hype. But while West succeeded in making a splash in the tabloids, the reviews of his women’s athletic garb were less than stellar. “Perfect for the zombie apocalypse!” went one line of attack, while others called West’s bleak, flesh-toned body-stockings borderline misogynistic and downright ugly. And Alexander Wang’s athleisure collection for H&M, while hotly anticipated, featured women’s items that were decidedly Jeston-esque and bared nearly all, not entirely appropriate for a jaunt to get your daily latte (unless you’re Rihanna, that is).

The secret to getting women to buy more athleisure offerings? It probably lies somewhere in between the space-age and zombie-inflected stuff from Wang and West and the purely technical athletic gear Under Armour has been making. If they build it (and we can actually wear it everywhere), we will come.