Fashion News: Spring Sportswear

Classic sportswear has returned to the runway for spring. Who says American ingenuity doesn’t have staying power?
From left to right: Prada, Derek Lam, Bottega Veneta, Yves Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney, Céline, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Wayne

“If I see another distressed black leather motorcycle jacket, I’m going to shoot myself in the face,” says Alexander Wang, arguably New York’s hottest young designer. In three years, he’s turned an insatiable cult following into a $24 million business and practically engineered fashion’s ongoing biker-babe trend with oversize T-shirt dresses, shredded leggings, and, yes, black leather motorcycle jackets. But this season, the 26-year-old who was once obsessed with Foxy Brown and Guns N’ Roses is go­ing all-American. Wang has picked up football. “I feel like it’s time for something a little more authentic and nostalgic—collegiate Bruce Weber girls hanging out in dorm rooms wearing tighty-whities and no makeup,” he says of his new take on athletic sportswear, featuring reverse khaki trenches, gray sweatshirts with shoulder pads, and green camping ponchos. “I’m not interested in hard anymore.”

He’s not alone. This season, it’s almost as if Anne Klein, one of the American sportswear greats, came back from the grave to whisper the style’s main reference points to designers in New York, Paris, and Milan: Casual separates…utilitarian fabrics…clean silhouettes…versatile activewear…parkas, trousers, Bermuda shorts, tees…red, white (actually, khaki), and blue. “The look seems so fresh right now because it hasn’t really been done in such a long time,” says New York newcomer Prabal Gurung, who focused on lean, leg-lengthening tropical wool pants and silk crepe button-downs in black and Yves Klein blue.

Though many younger designers have made separates their calling card, including Shipley & Halmos, Wayne, Band of Outsiders, Richard Chai, and Jenni Kayne, this season a number of the biggest names on the runway (Phoebe Philo at Céline, Hannah MacGibbon at Chloé, Derek Lam, and Marc Jacobs) did it as well. And so sportswear’s long evolution—since its Depression-era beginnings, when stylish women began to break from extravagant French fashion in search of functional basics—continues. If the ’50s had twinsets and slacks (Claire McCardell; Hubert de Givenchy, who was the first high-fashion designer to do a collection of separates); the ’60s, psychedelic skinny-leg suits (Biba, André Courrèges, Pierre Cardin); the ’70s, pantsuits, gauchos, and Annie Hall androgyny (Yves Saint Laurent, Ralph Lauren); the ’80s, full-blown menswear and power dressing (Giorgio Armani, Anne Klein, Donna Karan’s “Seven Easy Pieces”); and the ’90s, a mishmash of everything before, then the past decade has been a cavalcade of female caricatures. We’ve gone from Hitchcock heroine to Kewpie doll, dark bondage vamp to bohemian goddess. In 2010, we’re finally emerging as adults with a sense of humor.

From left to right: Preen, Prabal Giurung, Jeffrey Monteiro, Chloé, Alexander Wang, Jenni Kayne, Richard Chai

What spring’s sportswear has that previous generations didn’t is a particular quirkiness. Though this new style is defined by crisp, above-the-knee skirts; mid-thigh shorts; boxy, double-breasted blazers, and pants, pants, pants (mostly pleated on top and cropped at the ankle), the look is about not taking fashion too seriously. Colors and prints are meant to be mixed. Sequins are supposed to be worn during the day. Oversize jackets should go with equally oversize trousers.

Chris Benz, a New York designer known for his playful colors and relaxed tailoring, calls this new anything-goes trend the “athleticism of luxury.” For spring, he envisioned a young Cheryl Tiegs at a party, wearing his wool gabardine track pants or drawstring short skirt with a beaded baseball jacket. “The economy is so bad and everyone is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, all you want is a purple jacket,” Benz says. “Luxury doesn’t have to mean being strapped into something. You can be really dressed up but feel like you’re wearing sweatpants.”

The key to pulling off the new separates, Araks Yeramyan believes, is in “a little off-ness.” “You have to get dressed and then go one step away from right,” says the New York designer, who got the idea when she started dressing her kids in the wackiest combinations she could dream up. This season, she showed basic concepts such as tailored blazers and shorts, but in overly shrunken silhouettes and unexpected shades, like paprika. “The great thing about simple pieces is that they require you to really make a look your own,” Yeramyan says. “You have to put it together every time. When I do it, it’s me. No one else can put that particular combination together.”

From left to right: Chris Benz, Band of Outsiders, Araks, Chadwick Bell, Karen Walker, Shipley & Halmos, Rag & Bone, 3.1 Phillip Lim

Of course, in a tough economy, designers must also pay attention to the bottom line. And separates, because of their lower price points, are generally more attractive to retailers than, say, a $3,000 chiffon dress. “There’s a general rule that when a buyer comes to see a collection, she wants to see three tops for every bottom,” says Gurung, because a woman is likelier to buy multiple small purchases than one big-ticket item. “Retail-wise, if you look at brands like Akris, which does an amazing business at Saks and Bergdorf, it’s a separates business.”

Wang, for one, understands the importance of a repeat customer. He knows his fans expect a new motorcycle jacket each season. This spring, he created a deconstructed brown leather version with a gray merino rib collar and a green parka attached to the bottom. “I like to take things out of context—taking trench coats and khakis, paneling them with different materials, ripping the sleeves off, working with fabrics like Tencel, which looks like Astroturf,” Wang says. “Anyone can throw on a dress and heels and look glamorous. But how do you reinvent the idea of what’s sexy? You break the rules.”