Lukas SkyeAugust 10, 2020Comment

The Evolution of Fashion: The Tracksuit

Lukas SkyeAugust 10, 2020Comment

A brief inquiry into European fashion staples would not dare to be complete without the mention of its timeless hero, the tracksuit. Fashion is far from the only realm that this ensemble has made waves in. The Tracksuit owes its fame to not only early athleticism but cinema, music and the underground scene as a whole. A piece of apparel once largely associated with sports heroes, the likes of Bruce Lee and Franz Beckenbauer, has transformed into an entity of its own in the respect of pop culture.

From the 1970’s to today the tracksuit has evolved in a way that does not allow for the labels of ‘fad’ or ‘phases’. Primarily used as actual sportswear in its early days, Adidas brought the piece to life in the fashion realm. The tracksuit certainly owes its popularity to the underground and mainstream rap scene that heavily utilized the pieces in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Acts like Run DMC and Missy Elliot adorned the ensemble while gracing the pages of magazines and music videos. Hence, sending the tracksuit into a cultural shift and denoting it as armor for the generations early music heroes.

At the same time the cultural shift took on another form in the UK and Eastern Europe, the tracksuit climbed in popularity among the working class and situated itself as the perfect leisure item for not only Hip-hop fans but the average working man as well. Cinema later took hold of the look and shifted it further, with characters of Mafioso proportions in TV series like ‘The Sopranos’ donning the working mans suit. Even today the popularity of the tracksuit in the United Kingdom and Greater Ireland has not fallen, in every Genre and Sub-genre of the underground and mainstream scene the trackie can be found kept alive by the Grime and warehouse music scene.

Of course with all fluid fashion staples the tracksuit did not escape its fair share of criticism. It was not long after its rise in the urban scenes of Europe that it was categorized with terms such as “Chav” “Gopnik“ and “thug”. But of course, as all items once deemed lower class the tracksuit made a shift once again in the realm of high fashion with off-duty models and the traveling upper class parading through airports and runways in the same piece that was held to a much lower standard in the elitist eye only a decade earlier. The tracksuit, however mundane it may be to the average eye, is the epitomization of an industry that capitalizes on the undergound and working culture.

The history of an item is just as important as the emotional evocation that comes with wearing it. As consumers and fans of fashion it’s not only important but greatly ethical to educate ourselves on the origins of even the smallest additions to our wardrobes. Whether your style slides to the side of a classic Fila or the higher fashion markets Gucci suit, you can wear that trackie with pride and assist yourself in becoming a more ethical consumer.