The Best Workout Clothes for Women

Courtesy of Dincwear Dancewear

The Best Workout Clothes for Women to Wear on Repeat in 2023

Oh hello, new leggings.

By Talia Abbas

Source Posted on February 21, 2023

Activewear
Dincwear Activewear

Gym clothes have come a long way from their humble T-shirt-meets-spandex-bottoms heyday—and the best workout clothes for women today have to meet a variety of fits and needs before they can claim a prime spot in our rotation. Between lounging and working out, we ask a lot from our athleisure (not to mention our wardrobe essentials in general), so it’s essential to invest in workhorse pieces that can go anywhere, do anything, and still make you feel like your best self.

Stylish options to flex your fashion sense are obviously a must, but most of us also want workout leggings and sports bras that are comfy, functional, and supportive—especially if these are pieces you’re slipping into on a bleary-eyed morning (amirite?). Tons of brands know this, and the active and loungewear space is thriving with options right now across a range of price points and sizes.

To help you build the ultimate workout wardrobe for doing all the things, we’ve curated a list of MVP-worthy activewear brands—many of which you probably already know, love, and have shopped before. From sportswear icons like Nike to sustainable brands like Girlfriend Collective, below you’ll find a comprehensive guide to stocking up on the best workout clothes for women in 2023. 

Colorfulkoala

Amazon shoppers can’t get enough of Colorfulkoala’s workout gear—and neither can TikTokers who claim the leggings are “so cute,” “so soft,” and “almost an exact dupe for Lululemon’s buttery Align leggings.” The brand doesn’t just make leggings; you can also find comfy and smoothing workout tanks, sports bras, and bike shorts

Lululemon

Lululemon doesn’t play around with its workout gear, but you already knew that. The brand’s claim to fame is its supersoft Align leggings, which wear like second skin and are ubiquitous at workout studios, supermarket checkout lines, and cute local brunch spots alike. (Sizes run from 0 to 20.) Going for a full look? Check out its vast collection of sports bras, which range from low to medium support to high-impact—and come in styles like high-neck, longline, and racerback. (Pro tip: Keep your eyes peeled on its We Made Too Much section to score seasonal hues at a fraction of the original price.) 

Alo Yoga

Alo has a loyal roster of celeb fans (Kendall Jenner! Jennifer Lopez! Kaia Gerber!) and for good reason: The brand designs workout clothes that fit like a dream, whether you’re doing a vinyasa flow in your kitchen or taking your furry baby for a stroll around the block. The brand has coined a number of technical performance fabrics like Airlift and Alosoft since its early-aughts debut, and you can find simple silhouettes as well as more on-trend styles in its lineup—think pleated tennis skirts, asymmetric sports bras, sleek long-sleeve bodysuits, and its best-selling leggings

Girlfriend Collective

Using recycled plastic water bottles and fishing nets, Girlfriend Collective designs affordable, size-inclusive athleisure in an Instagram-friendly palette of colors like lilac, sage, and auburn. Top and bottom sizes start at XXS and go up to 6XL, with short (23.75″) and long inseams (28.5″) available for its top-rated leggings and comfortable unitards

Nike

Workout sneakers aside, Nike makes the gear of choice for pro athletes and, well, just about everyone else. The heritage brand has a near-infinite range of leggings, hoodies, running shorts, and workout tanks for straight and plus sizes—and keeps things fresh with coveted designer collaborations that blend high-performance fabrics with fashion-forward silhouettes. 

Adidas

Adidas and its iconic three stripes need no introduction. The activewear giant has been leading the charge in sustainable fabric innovation for years now, with the main mission of ending plastic waste. (It has an ongoing partnership with Parley for the Oceans to use recycled plastic debris and certified fabrics in its designs, and half of its collections are made of recycled polyester.) Adidas also has a long-standing collaboration with Stella McCartney, a pioneer in sustainable women’s wear design. 

Outdoor Voices

Outdoor Voices kicked the whole athleisure movement into high gear when it debuted its pastel color-block leggings in 2014, and the brand remains a go-to for exercise clothing that’s just downright fun to wear. Cute crop tops? A mainstay. Skorts? Those too. How about a dress to dance in? As if you’d want to wear anything else.

Zella

Nordstrom carries a mix of legacy workout brands—from Sweaty Betty to Nike—that you’re probably already familiar with, but don’t sleep on its in-house label, Zella. The Nordstrom-owned brand sells everything from sweat-wicking cover-ups to nap-ready sweatpants, with shoppers unanimously obsessed with its high-waist Live In leggings. The bestseller has more than 7,200 rave reviews on Nordstrom’s site (not to mention Glamour‘s own stamp of approval) and comes in a full-length and cropped version. 

Beyond Yoga

Beyond Yoga has some of the best fabrics in the game, with Spacedye arguably being the star of the show. This one-of-a-kind fabric is stretchy yet supportive, and deliciously cool to the touch. You can find it on everything from cropped tanks to low-impact bras and maternity yoga pants (which tons of stylish women swear by during pregnancies, FYI).

All Access

Bandier’s in-house brand All Access has truly nailed the trifecta of durable, stylish, and versatile activewear. The buzzy label offers a tight-knit edit of leggings, bike shorts, and sports bras available in a rainbow palette of colors and lengths, from three-inch biker shorts to capris and high-waist options with pockets. Shop items separately, or snap up one of its kits to mix and match (and save a little coin while you’re at it). 

Port de Bras

Port de Bras is a relative newcomer in the activewear space, but one you should definitely have on your radar. The ballet-inspired brand gained momentum in 2020 for its unique, high-fashion approach to performance wear, with founder Clarissa Egaña prioritizing the use of traceable, eco-friendly fabrics for her pieces.

Tory Sport

Function meets form at Tory Sport, which you can rely on for high-quality essentials that go beyond your everyday lounge and studio needs. The brand has plenty of adorable tennis sets, chic golf dresses, swimwear, and glamping gear to put a luxe spin on whatever activity you’re doing.

Set Active

Get ready to live in Set Active’s lounge and workout sets. The cool-girl brand serves up sculpting styles in snap-worthy hues like mint, espresso, and sage.

FP Movement

Free People’s sportswear-focused sister line has a vast selection of onesies, sports bras, and bike shorts that look as good as they feel. Also new for spring 2023? Swim (under the name FP Beach), so add them to the list of best swimwear brands, stat.

Athleta

You know Athleta, you love Athleta. Gap’s sister brand is a mainstay for workout gear that goes as hard as you do. Beyond the essentials, it also carries a ton of everyday styles—think down jackets, cozy wraps, and comfy travel pants.

Aritzia

Come for the Super Puff jackets and Melina leather trousers, stay for Tna’s plush hoodies and sweatpants that you’ll never want to take off. Also great here? It’s white T-shirts and tank tops for throwing over anything from jeans to leggings.

Vuori

Vuori has had a loyal following for years now, but only recently did the brand go mass thanks to TikTok virality. The brand’s sherpa jacket was a top seller in the health and wellness category in 2022, according to LTK, but we’ve always loved its adjustable drawstring leggings and joggers.

Splits59

From sleek turtleneck tops and buttery-soft bras to high-rise leggings and bike shorts, Splits59 makes some of the best low-to-medium impact sportswear, which is why we love it so much. Also noteworthy: Many leggings come in cropped versions so petites can feel represented too; the flared Raquel crop is a noted editor favorite.

Dance Dress Code

Dancewear Dress Code

Dance Schools Are Updating Their Dress Codes to Become More Inclusive

Catalyzed by the national reckoning on racial injustice last summer, much of the dance world began to ponder some tough questions, one being: “Who does traditional dancewear leave out?”

Brands heard the growing calls for a greater range of options and have begun producing and promoting new lines of flesh-tone shoes and tights. Meanwhile, dance schools working to become more inclusive have realized their dress codes—particularly for ballet classes, which have traditionally mandated pink tights and shoes designed to complement white dancers’ lines—are an obvious place to start.

A Wake-up Call

Like many, Darla Hoover, artistic director of Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and Ballet Academy East’s pre-professional division, calls the death of George Floyd “an awakening.” “We realized that those of us who consider ourselves anti-racist need to do more,” she says.

Both Hoover and Allie Beach, the director of youth programming at Broadway Dance Center, say changing their dancewear dress codes to allow flesh-tone dancewear a year ago was an immediate and easy adjustment to make, and they regret not seeing the need earlier.

“Honestly, it’s just something we should have done a long, long time ago and didn’t because we just stayed with that colonial idea that pink is the standard,” says Beach.

Outdated practices are often excused as part of the art form’s long history. Beach says it’s time to challenge those archaic traditions. “It’s a white-supremacist ideal tied back to when Black and brown people were not represented in the ballet world,” she says.

Of course, the need for inclusive dancewear options isn’t a new conversation. Dance Theatre of Harlem first debuted flesh-tone tights and shoes in 1974. As conversations about racial equity have grown in recent years, more organizations have followed suit. Boston Ballet School, for instance, has allowed flesh-tone shoes and tights since May 2019.

Other schools are now attempting to move at a pace best suited to their students’ needs. At Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, all dancewear for performance will transition from historical pink to flesh tones at the start of the fall 2021 semester to give students time to purchase new items.

The Impact of Inclusive Dress Codes

Beach says she not only hopes the new dress code allows students to wear what authentically represents them, but that the change has broader implications: “We have a heavy responsibility in cultivating these kids and the types of human beings that they are, not just teaching them dance.”

At the Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis, Missouri, co-artistic director of dance Kirven Douthit-Boyd says the department made it mandatory for its 14- to 18-year-old advanced dancers to wear flesh-tone tights and shoes in classes and performances in 2018.

“What was most gratifying when we made the shift was seeing how they looked and how it made them feel,” says Douthit-Boyd. “To see the continuation of the line and clarity of form on their Black and brown bodies was almost like them looking at a new person.”

Douthit-Boyd says the shift is a large one for his school’s community and he didn’t want to “rip the Band-Aid off.” So the older dancers serve as an example while the younger students gradually understand and become accustomed to skin-tone dancewear, before COCA implements the same policy in its lower levels.

Embracing Gender Inclusivity

Meanwhile, in support of their LGBTQ+ students, some schools are updating their dress codes and class terminology to be more gender-inclusive.

Juilliard’s dance division simply asks that dancers wear formfitting clothes and makes no distinction in dancewear between genders. Director of dance Alicia Graf Mack says ballet classes are historically gendered, but there are ways to challenge this norm. Alongside a growing number of schools, Juilliard no longer uses the term “men’s class” and instead offers an “allegro class” to all students. Pointe classes are open to all dancers.

The University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance made similar changes after one of its nonbinary students suggested a gender-neutral dress code and classes based on technical focus rather than gender.

“We do not want to be this ivory tower that doesn’t change with the times and is not open to understanding the multitude of people and identities that exist,” Mack says.

The Way Forward

While dancewear dress-code changes can serve as a starting point, school directors acknowledge there is more work to be done. Hoover says her next mission is making dance training accessible to young dancers from all backgrounds. “It has to start in the beginning,” she says, “so we can develop more dancers in the first place to be hired into companies who will then move on to be teachers and directors.”

Originated & First Published by Breanna Mitchell April 26, 2021 in dancemagazine.com

Shared by Dincwear Dancewear on SME Growth

History of Workout and Dancewear

Dancewear, Activewear and Wolrkout Wear Trends

How the Leotard Dress Code of the ’80s Set the Stage for Your Yoga Pants.

What we wear to work out (and hang out) has a surprisingly feminist backstory. History of Workout wear and Dancewear.

Over the past decade, women have gradually embraced living their lives sheathed in spandex. The shift from so-called “real clothes” to athleisure has long been a polarizing one, with critics lamenting both our collective dressing down and the fact that wardrobe staples like workout leggings hug the body so tightly we might as well be walking around naked. “We may be able to conquer the world wearing spandex,” an opinion editor wrote in The New York Times in 2018, “But wouldn’t it be easier to do so in pants that don’t threaten to show every dimple and roll in every woman over 30?” Ouch.

Given the tenor of that criticism, the story of how workout wear became street fashion is a surprisingly feminist one. It’s a story of women ditching their girdles and so-called “ladylike” attire in favor of comfort and freedom of movement, and it reveals a profound evolution not only in the way women move through their lives, but also in how we think about our own bodies. And it traces back to Gilda Marx, an ambitious aerobics instructor to the stars, who almost single-handedly launched the leotard dress code of the 1980s.

In the mid-1970s, while Jazzercise and small studios across America were bringing aerobic dancing to the masses, Gilda was teaching her own version of dance fitness to Hollywood’s elite at Body Design by Gilda, a penthouse studio in Los Angeles painted shades of peach and blue. (Think Body by Bunny from Apple TV’s Physical, but much more LA.)

Credit: Shutterstock

Gilda attracted A-listers from Bette Midler to Barbra Streisand, who paid homage to Gilda in the 1979 romantic comedy The Main Event with a campy workout scene shot at the studio. “There were some classes where it was almost like a meeting of the gods,” studio manager and instructor Ken Alan told me. “You know, the two biggest names in movies would be three feet from each other.” Gilda’s studio even launched the queen of fitness herself: Jane Fonda became hooked on its group classes in the late ’70s; by ’82 she had opened her own workout studio and released a mega-bestselling fitness book and home video.

But Gilda’s influence would extend far beyond the rich and famous when she embarked on a quest to transform the era’s universal exercise uniform. She wanted to build a better leotard.

As someone who spent most of her time in leotards (she was a professional dancer before taking up aerobics), Gilda appreciated how they moved. But it bugged her that, for anyone who wasn’t built like a prepubescent ballerina, leotards weren’t always flattering — or comfortable. The garment hadn’t changed all that much since its introduction by French acrobat Jules Léotard in the 19th century. By the 1930s, leotards dyed pink or black were dancers’ rehearsal outfit of choice. But the leotards of mid-century America were still made of natural fiber blends, which meant they rode up in places they should stay down and sagged in places they should stay up.

Gilda knew there had to be a better design, one that supported, flattered, and fit properly. “I wanted to create a beautiful garment that would inspire my students to want to exercise,” she wrote in her 1984 exercise book, Body by Gilda. One that was “flexible, functional and fantastically glamorous.” She would soon discover that the key lay in one of the DuPont chemical company’s newest synthetic fibers: Lycra. The company had spent decades developing Lycra in a quest to design a better girdle, but thanks to Gilda, its triumph would come not from restricting women’s bodies but setting them free.

Credit: Courtesy

In the 1940s, when DuPont launched its multimillion dollar effort to invent the perfect sturdy-but-stretchy fiber — or spandex, as engineers began to call it, which was an anagram of expands — it had one objective: to revolutionize and then dominate the girdle industry. That’s because, at the time, pretty much every woman over the age of 12 was wearing one.

“In the period when Dupont was casting around for new synthetic fiber opportunities, it was taken for granted that a woman should not appear in public, and hardly in private, unless she was wearing a girdle,” writes the anthropologist Kaori O’Connor, who in the early 21st century gained rare access to the company’s archives and in 2011 published Lycra, an investigation into the birth of the fiber. Girdles were a “hallmark of respectability” and a prerequisite for looking good in clothes.

But the experience of wearing a girdle was hellish. This was partly due to the fabric, which was made from a stiff rubber-covered thread that makes today’s Spanx — even more extreme waist trainers — seem forgiving by comparison.

When DuPont surveyed American women about their dream innovations, they consistently asked for more comfortable girdles, and the company saw the potential for massive earnings. Eventually, in the early 1960s, a DuPont chemist named Joe Shivers revealed a fiber that was lighter than rubberized thread but had much more restraining power. The company named it Lycra. Cut to: stretchy girdles aplenty.

At first Lycra girdles were a hit, and demand outran supply. Then, a curious thing happened. Despite the fact that the first massive wave of baby boomers were becoming teenagers — the age when most women began to purchase figure shapers — girdle sales started to fall. DuPont and the rest of corporate America had assumed that the young baby boomer women would shop and dress like their mothers. Instead, as the 1960s unfurled, they were faced with what legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland dubbed the “youthquake” — with miniskirts and Mary Quant and a full-on fashion rebellion.

Throughout the decade, DuPont poured resources into trying to keep women in girdles. They even launched an item called a “form-persuasive garment” aimed specifically at the teen market, in case it was the word girdle to which teens were averse. (It wasn’t. And adults felt the same.) Despite popular legend, few women in the late ’60s and early ’70s burned their bras, but most actually trashed their girdles. When the president of the undergarment giant Playtex called up his marketing firm in a panic to report that his own wife had thrown away her girdles, according to the 1997 book Rocking the Ages, the end seemed nigh.

“‘Getting rid of the girdle’ emerged as a significant cultural moment, in every sense a defining act of ’emancipation,'” writes O’Connor. “Its abandonment was political action on the personal level, an act of liberation through stuff.”

By 1975, girdle sales were half of what they had been a decade earlier. With American women now moving about happily unbound, warehouses filled with unwanted girdle fabric, rolls upon rolls dyed a rainbow of vibrant colors. Gradually, small professional dancewear manufacturers and seamstresses began to snatch it up to make garments that, they discovered, “hugged the body and moved with it in a way that had never been possible before.”

But it was Gilda Marx who would bring these new leotards to the masses.

Credit: Courtesy of Gilda Marx

Gilda teamed up with a manufacturer who until then had specialized in car seat upholstery; her home was converted into a leotard laboratory where she experimented with different Lycra blends until she landed on her holy grail.

In 1975, she introduced the Flexatard, a nylon-Lycra blend leotard with all the support of a girdle and none of the cultural baggage. Flexatards came in long-sleeved, cap-sleeve, and spaghetti strap versions. And they came in dark, chic colors (red and burgundy and navy) and later, yellow and peach and green and raspberry.

She opened a small boutique in her penthouse exercise studio and began selling Flexatards to students who served as a kind of instant focus group for her products. “One day I looked at the back of my class and saw Bette Midler with arms, legs, and everything flying,” she wrote in Body by Gilda. “She was having a wonderful time” — and wearing a Flexatard. “After the class a panting Divine Miss M bounced up to me and said, ‘I absolutely adored this workout and this leotard is great. It is the first leotard that was ever able to support my chest.’ To a leotard designer, that was the ultimate challenge and the ultimate compliment.”

Gilda incorporated as Flexatard, Inc., and before long, women in aerobics classes across the country would be wearing her garments. Dancewear giants Capezio and Danskin got in on the game, too, and began making their own colorful Lycra-blend attire for aerobic dancers. In Britain, a former model named Debbie Moore was building her own dance empire at the Pineapple Dance studio. She built on Gilda’s designs, working with DuPont to blend cotton with Lycra and release an even more comfortable line of leotards and dancewear. Her footless tights became predecessors to today’s leggings.

RELATED: Colorful Leggings Are Back — See How Celebrities Are Wearing Them Right Now

When anthropologist Kaori O’Connor interviewed women about their memories of slipping into Lycra leotards and leggings for the first time, they told her it felt exhilarating. The fabric bonded women exercisers, they said, by serving as a kind of collective aerobics uniform that “seemed to free the body and hold it, cover it and yet expose it.”

By the early ’80s, Lycra leotards and leggings would burst out of the studio and onto the street, as Gilda and other designers introduced tops, skirts, and shorts that allowed women to come and go from aerobics class without having to change. Dancewear also became popular among women who liked their fresh, edgy “fashion look.” (Think: Jennifer Beals in Flashdance and early Madonna.) In 1984 alone, American women purchased 21 million leotards. An aesthetic that still feels like textbook ’80s was born.

This represented a paradigm shift in the way women viewed their physicality. “Lycra became the second skin for a new life in which self-confidence would be rooted in women and their bodies, not in rules, dress codes, wearing clothes that were ‘appropriate’ for age or social status, and especially not in wearing girdles,” writes O’Connor. “What had been the ultimate fiber of control now became the defining fiber of freedom.”

Credit: Getty Images

In the years that followed, middle-and upper-class Americans’ wardrobes became increasingly dominated by activewear, as signaling that one cared about working out was as important as actually working out (a trend that lives on, especially in fashion). “Now all the world was a gym and our closets were fast becoming lockers,” wrote the journalist Blair Sabol in her 1986 book The Body of America. “In fact, jock couture was probably the first time American designers became an honest fashion force. We had the handle on sweat and lifestyle, while Europe continued to runway sleek and fantasy.”

By the 1990s, workout leotards and tights were increasingly replaced by Lycra sports bra tops and bike shorts, as girls whose moms had worn Gilda Marx’s Flexatards came of age and put their own spin on sweat couture. Buns of Steel frontwoman Tamilee Webb appeared in the iconic early ’90s home workout video series in a sports bra and bikini bottoms, all the better to show off her aspirational hard body; in the 1995 movie Clueless, Cher (Alicia Silverstone) goads Tai (Brittany Murphy) to sculpt her own body in Tamilee’s image while both women don bike short silhouettes. Princess Diana helped to make the bike short fashionable as everyday wear, often pairing graphic tees and sweatshirts with colorful Lycra bottoms.

As yoga exploded across America in the second half of that decade, it birthed yet another booming Lycra apparel industry (much to the dismay of yogis who taught their disciples to seek spiritual rather than material wealth). The supermodel yogi Christy Turlington launched her own line of proto-athleisure in the mid-’90s, and Lululemon was founded in 1998; its iconic fabric, luon, is a blend of nylon and Lycra. Madonna, once again, helped to take gym fashion from the studio to the street when she became a poster woman for yoga with her 1998 album Ray of Light, an homage to her practice. Yoga pants were here to stay.

Most recently, the pandemic has ushered in an era of unprecedented sartorial comfort, as women, confined to their homes, now swaddle themselves in whatever stretchy, forgiving fabrics bring them pleasure. Contemporary athleisure — or “athlivesure”as InStyle recently dubbed it — is less its own distinct look than an amalgam of the past few decades’s styles; we’re wearing sports bras and bodysuits and bike shorts and yoga pants in whatever way feels good. In something of a full-circle moment, today’s trending workout wear is also hewing back toward the look of corsetry. It’s important to note, though, that this is a result of a new form of sexy dressing kicked off by Bridgerton more than a prescriptive requirement to be cinched. (Kardashian-beloved waist trainers are somewhere between the two; they promise shape-related “results,” but they don’t hold nearly the cultural grip on women’s bodies as their forerunners did.)

The last few years have, after all, seen major workout wear brands, from Athleta to Lululemon, begin to feature models in a wider range of sizes, as our cultural understanding of what a “fit body” looks like is evolving and we are reconsidering our aversion to “dimples” and “rolls.” While truly size-inclusive workout wear is still limited — with a few shining exceptions — we appear to be inching closer to a place where all women can have access to the kind of physical liberation and pride that straight-sized women have been experiencing since Gilda led them away from girdles into leotards’ light in the 1970s. Now we just call yoga pants “flare leggings,” and we wear them wherever we want.

Some, still argue that Lycra clothing — especially of the compressing, control-top variety — is merely a girdle by a different name. But personally? I’d much rather slip into spandex designed to help me dance, run, sweat, and generally move with ease than a figure shaper meant to cinch my body into one socially acceptable form. Fashion that expands often allows women to do the same.

Danielle Friedman is the author of the new book Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World, a cultural history of women’s fitness.

Article By Danielle Friedman: Originally Published on instyle.com , Jan 13, 2022 @ 1:45 pm.

Danielle Friedman is the author of the new book Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World, a cultural history of women’s fitness.

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