Rediscovering yourself and nature
Influencing the activewear and lingerie sectors for the 2021 spring/summer season
We live in uncertain times, yet Aude Penouty, Creative Director and founder of Entada Textile, dared to take a look at the activewear and lingerie trends for the spring/summer 2021 season at the beginning of this year. The fashion specialist is a member of the Eurovet Colour Committee. She supports Interfilière when it comes to questions about upcoming trends.
Aude Penouty had seen that we are on a journey towards becoming more mindful of ourselves, to self-benevolance. Kindness and forbearance are in the foreground, together with a willingness to make things better rather than just beautiful. From this, Aude Penouty had derived three themes for activewear. Firstly, much progress has been made in the design of sportswear and swimwear, with the aim of striking the right balance between physical well-being and mental health. Secondly, two new, essential key performance indicators must be taken into account when it comes to design: attractiveness and durability. Thirdly, the boom in home workouts supported digitally through apps, online platforms and social media opens up new opportunities for brand manufacturers. With their own training content and popular coaches, they can effectively promote themselves and their capsule collections. For customers, making a purchase is transformed into a brand experience.
Overall, the upcoming spring and summer season is characterised by caring for yourself more, by wanting to make things better rather than just beautiful and by the question of how lingerie, sportswear and swimwear can benefit from each other.
Sportswear is heading towards fostering both self-discovery and performance. By sporting these pieces, the wearers can express their personality, uniqueness and lifestyle.
Even with lingerie, just looking beautiful is no longer enough. “There is a significant need for lingerie that goes beyond beauty and instead serves a purpose,” says Aude Penouty. It will also be important for the lingerie sector to make progress in the activewear sector to capitalise on the benefits of the athleisure trend. The boundaries with the lingerie market have already become blurred. Certain clothing brands, such as yoga wear specialist lululemon, have real sportswear ranges on offer.
Aude Penouty had taken a closer look at the references to trends, the activities of progressive brand manufacturers and fabric innovations, and summarised them in a study on activewear and lingerie with five main directions. Two of these are considered in more detail below.
Inclusivity
Brand manufacturers are increasingly responding to the great natural diversity seen in faces and shapes, thus ensuring greater diversity and inclusiveness. They are designing collections that ignore gender, skin colour and body size, fit perfectly and offer freedom of movement. Brands are increasingly focusing on models with an unusual look or pick up important social issues and movements such as those of the LGBTQ community and Black Lives Matter.
Niche markets are thus increasingly coming into focus. Certain brands have already developed solutions to successfully occupy a number of specialist areas. Elomi Lingerie is one of the brands that believe in diversity. The lingerie specialist launched its Live Limitless Challenge on Instagram, an initiative to encourage women to live a life without limits. To that end, health and wellness expert, Dr Denise McDermott, created 30 mini challenges. The tasks are all about improving yourself while having a little fun at the same time. The resulting images are shared on Instagram.
Other brands driving the trend towards greater diversity include Parfait Lingerie, MATE the Label and Evelyn & Bobbie
Holistic aquaworld
As part of seeking harmony between body and soul, new sports like Kundalini yoga, free diving, Piloxing, SoulCycle and hot Pilates are coming to the fore. Water sports also promote striking a balance between body and mind, while raising awareness of sustainability at the same time. Calls for performance, technical features and also a low ecological footprint are becoming louder. According to a survey published by Le Défi Media Group in May 2020, sustainability represents both the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity this year. “67% of brand manufacturers surveyed think that the use of sustainable and innovative materials is a priority”, is to be read here.
A large proportion of fabric innovations are therefore aimed at even better quality and greater responsibility in production. Recycling, biodegradable yarns and organic polymers play an increasingly important role for the consumer, alongside offering high performance such as UV or chlorine resistance and antibacterial properties. Purchasing materials in particular is therefore transformed from a task to a mission in the sense of a corporate culture.
Brands following this trend include CARDO, CHLORE Swimwear, the organic fashion label TWOTHIRDS and JOSEA Surfwear.
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