such great heights
Right now, women aren’t only owning sport, but sport is ruling womenswear, too, with clothes designed to let you run free, aim high and be your best self
Just as women are making headlines in sport, so too is sportswear taking over our wardrobes.
Can you dress your way to excellence? To watch Serena Williams walk into a crowded room in Milan and part a sea of photographers with just the sheer dynamism of her presence is to understand the woman crush. This is what happened when the tennis champ – all poise, glutes and abs – took her seat front row at the Versace SS17 show.
Suddenly, pre-show small talk turned to going to the gym more, eating less refined sugar and sitting taller (it had been a long fashion month). Lately, we’ve seen a lot of that: women daring each other to raise their game. It’s fitting that at a time when women have been making historic gains in politics across the world, they’re also owning sports headlines – and in doing so, storming not one but two big old boys’ clubs. From the string of female athletes who slayed at the 2016 Rio
Olympics (British boxer Nicola Adams, Simone Biles and the US gymnastics team, the Australian women’s rugby team, Syrian refugee swimmer Yusra Mardini, the list goes on) to Williams sealing her position as the greatest tennis player of all time with a record 23 Grand Slam wins, the past 12 months may have had a lot of drawbacks, but it also gave the fitness-minded woman much to fan-girl over.
Sportswear has been a hot topic for several seasons, and the trend isn’t slowing down. On the SS17 runways, designers used athleticwear to show the emotional and physical strength of women – whether it was Maria Grazia Chiuri, Christian Dior’s first female creative director, playing up a theme of feminism and empowerment with quilted fencing jackets, or the return of the ski trouser at Balenciaga. Donatella Versace even included a feminist manifesto in the soundtrack for her athletic collection: “This show is for the women taking chances. Take the leap. If we do nothing, we get nothing.” Those words drove home the message of power that is present in her nylon dresses. “Sportswear is the future of fashion,” she said.
We get it: fashion is heaving with a new kind of power dressing that couldn’t be more different from your mother’s old broad-shouldered check suit. Instead, it’s an elevated version of performance wear – clothes to move fast and make big moves in; clothes that dare you to be amazing. And they’re made for women by women: Versace, Chiuri, Stella Mccartney and Clare Waight Keller for Chloé were all on message for SS17.
But just because a woman dresses like an athlete doesn’t necessarily make it so. Or does it? The sisterly solidarity that swells in us when powerful women in fashion use their platform to celebrate all that women can do is too strong for our inner cynic to squash.
We already know the benefit to dressing for the position you want. Researchers at Northwestern University in the US found that clothing can affect your state of mind, which can have an impact on productivity. Sometimes you have to literally wear your confidence on your back before it sinks in, similar to the way scientists say the act of smiling can make you feel better.
Even if you’re no natural runner, when you put on a pair of new tights and kicks, you feel like there’s no limit to how far you can sprint. The clothes won’t turn you into something you’re not, but the right kit (and mental picture of Williams) may just give you the extra oomph you need to get there.