Yoga stretches from studio to high street
Yoga is hardly the latest thing. Ancient seals excavated in the Indus Valley depicting human forms in yoga poses date back more than 5,000 years. While its vogue-like fashionability seems a fairly recent phenomenon, I recall growing up in the Granola Era, when yoga started making inroads in North America, seeing a lumpy woman in washed-out, ill-fitting leotard performing a series of yoga poses in what seemed to be a Lutheran Church basement on morning PBS. Even as a child, it was clear to me that this pursuit was not the height of fashion.
As we have all witnessed, however, the practice of yoga has taken on such momentum that it has left mouldy church basements and blossomed into a full-fledged New Age and fashion-forward lifestyle cult, with its own firmament of stars (Rodney Yee, Bikram Choudhury), self-professed hard-body acolytes (Madonna, Sting, Lady Gaga), pilgrimage destinations ( Eat, Pray, Love ashram retreats in India), even its own celestial raiment (Lululemon).
Some 30 million North Americans practise yoga, a number, according to namasta.com, that grows by 20 per cent a year. Yoga is now the fastest-growing “sport” in the U.S., with $27 billion spent annually in that country on yoga products — an expenditure that has increased by 87 per cent over the last five years.
Kitsilano surfer dude Chip Wilson founded Lululemon in Vancouver in 1988. Lululemon Athletica Inc. (which went public in 2007) has more than 100 stores around the world, including North America, Australia and New Zealand, and annual revenues of close to $1 billion. (Indeed, this week Lululemon recalled some of its black Luon yoga pants because they were too see-through, and analysts suggested that rapid expansion has raised quality-control issues for the company, which has a number of manufacturing partnerships with suppliers.)
Those are impressive numbers, and with designer/practitioners such as Vera Wang and Christy Turlington (who famously demonstrated the bow pose in a Calvin Klein evening dress on the cover of Vogue) jumping on the yoga bandwagon with their own Namastechic lines, the fashion stakes are being raised both inside the studio and on the high street.
A huge part of the success of Lululemon, of course, is that its bestselling black stretch Astro pant is not only brilliantly designed for the practice of yoga, but also to flatter a wearer’s legs and backside. This benefit has not escaped notice. Over the holiday season, Lulu stores were so packed that the company hired security guards to manage traffic. Not all those Astros flying off the shelves were going to be used for yoga.
Airports are full of travellers dressed for comfort and style in their favourite Lulus. Lululemon CEO Christine Day (who maintains that NHL players secretly wear Lululemon on the ice under their uniforms) boldly wears her Astros with a tailored jacket to corporate meetings. Indeed, the black Astro pant — accessorized with a good blowout, a pair of UGGs and a Starbucks coffee — has become the errandrunning urban streetwear uniform of the toned and manicured “yummy mummy.” In vigorously casual cities such as Vancouver and the uptown neighbourhoods of Toronto, the look, which says “I’m into taking care of myself,” is practically a street-style epidemic. This look is now making its mark outside the studio on other street styles and runway trends. Over the past couple of seasons, denim has conformed to the slim silhouette presented by the Astro by being woven with body-hugging Lycra and Spandex and cut superslim on the leg for both men and women. This, combined with the recent interest in ’80s fashion, has made way for the return of the legging worn as a knifelike trouser (spring’s variation is a vividly hued Capri pant that recalls the ’60s with a similarly slim cut). All of these looks, which arguably follow in the wake of the fashion for wearing yoga clothes as streetwear, have been adopted as key elements of the new day-to-night global uniform of the chic downtown set: skinny bottoms, worn beneath layers of ultrathin workout-style T-shirts, and then topped with boyfriend-style jackets or blouson-cut leather bombers looped with pendants and scarves — and to emphasize the ultra-thin leg, a heavy, chunky-heeled bootie or shoe. Basically, a yoga-studio look dressed up for the street. Over the past few seasons we’ve also seen — from designers as diverse as Roberto Cavalli, Tori Burch and Ralph Lauren — the enduring strength of what many have described as the “rich hippie look.” That look is defined as — and worn by women who have apparently practised their asanas on the beaches of Goa — silky blouses and embroidered tunics with Indian motifs and embroidery, a profusion of Boho-chic scarves, chains with amulets and bangles, to be worn with worn-out leather boots just like the rockers who headed east for enlightenment back in the day when we first heard about yoga.
And of course, all of this can be teamed with a crazy Mongolian fur vest or chubby jacket, which was still the key must-have for the front-row fashion press at the New York shows this spring. Or Celine’s new “athletic” slides, which are absurdly fur-lined and promise to be the It sandal this summer.
Years from now, when we look back on the yoga-cult phenomenon, it will be interesting to observe whether its most enduring impact will be on the health and wellness of its practitioners (and I count myself among them) or the clothes we wore to pick up our morning chai latte.