OPINION: Cashmere trackies. $200 yoga pants. Designer compression gear. At the time of the year when lots of people are signing up for new gym memberships, it's easy to be sold the message that you need to look the part, too. Outrageously expensive workout clothes have become mainstream in recent years. The so-called athleisurewear market has been promoted by everyone from Stella McCartney to Kanye West. According to Australian research by Roy Morgan, Generation X (those born in the 1960s and 70s) spend the most on sportswear – 31.6 per cent of total dollars spent on it is by this age group, in fact. What exactly are they paying for?
Brand recognition is the big one. Historically premium sportswear was the proviso of the likes of Nike and Adidas, but Canadian retailer Lululemon joined the ranks several years ago (pushing high-priced yoga pants et al to the masses) and now most major fashion designers have a solid line of lycra, too.
READ MORE:
*Is it OK to wear gym gear as casual wear?
*Why it's disappointing when fitness icons like Lorna Jane don't embrace size diversity
*The pricey gym gear conspiracy
*Lululemon 'on crack' for selling $450 leggings, say customers
Like with any kind of clothing, wearing designer sportswear can give a person more confidence purely because it's "designer". More confidence for your workout may mean you exercise harder, more frequently, and enjoy it more. Whether there's any difference in your performance between wearing a $85 pair of Nike Pro Hypercool training capris and Ultracor's $300 "knockout leggings" is, presumably, up to the individual.
There's also the fabric quality of expensive sportswear to take into account – one assumes that expensive gear will last longer – but the base fabrics of almost all sportswear, no matter the cost, often remains the same. By and large, garments are a blend of polyester and elastane – not expensive materials from a manufacturing point of view by any stretch – and will sometimes contain a small percentage of a supposedly superior material such as bamboo.
Usually with outrageously expensive workout clothes, marketing descriptors will accompany the fabric to convince you it's worth the price: phrases such as "sweat wicking", "naturally breathable", "seamless" and "lightweight" often accompany these products which are sometimes made from fabric blends with an added fancy-sounding trademarked name.
A strong trend has emerged in pricy restorative workout clothing – think "compression gear" from the likes of Under Armour. There is some reputable science out there on the positive effects on muscle recovery, however nobody is able to claim that a $30 compression vest is more scientifically-effective than a $200 one.
The sports shoe industry has long understood how to get people to pay top dollar for their footwear. A theme of "medicalising" the way a new runner pounds the pavement, for example, offers up an opportunity to sell running shoes that will "correct" any problems with their stride. No scientific study has ever proven that a particular kind of premium, innovation-based running shoe will help the wearer more than any other shoe that fits the shape and size of their foot properly.
On a physical level, it's safe to say that no item of expensive clothing will improve the quality of your workout on its own. It's all in the mind, and perhaps there's nothing wrong with that.
Research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology has explained the systematic influences that clothes have on the wearer's psychological processes. From the study, it was gauged that the influence of an item of clothing depends entirely on the individual wearer's symbolic meaning of it. Scientists, for example, pay more attention to their work when wearing lab coats, but the same can't be said for a professional painter when wearing work overalls.
This is called "enclothed cognition", and dictates how clothing can change the way we think and act. When it comes to expensive workout clothes, though, the study's authors could not explicitly say a person would have a better workout whilst wearing them: "I think it would make sense that when you wear athletic clothing, you become more active and more likely to go to the gym and work out," author Hajo Adam said.
That's all a bit finicky, which is where we can turn to groupthink as the probable rationale behind why expensive exercise clothing might be worth it. That is, I think when you see others "look the part" when they're working out, you may want to drink the same Kool-Aid they are – in order to feeling included.
Wearing expensive workout gear makes you look like you're fit and good at what you're doing, whether you are or not. That feeling can be contagious in a gym setting.
If you follow others by wearing these clothes, others will naturally follow you. Thus, I believe we have entire gyms of people convinced they're all getting the best workouts possible because of what they visually see around them as a group, and the associations they've subconsciously forged together from that.
