The Active World: Sportswear Womenswear Trends Spring/Summer

Designers have always drawn on the visual language of sportswear to inform their designs. Sportswear offers a chance for the designer to explore more casual and relaxed references, and use a variety of different textiles unsuited to more obviously formal looks.

For Spring/Summer 2014, sportswear was a major theme of the catwalk. Tommy Hilfiger, a designer who epitomizes a healthy fashion vision, sees his sportswear influences as speaking to a uniquely Californian lifestyle, a modernist active narrative of sun and sand. The bright and contemporary atmosphere of the show channeled feelings of movement and a sporty carefree existence.

Anthony Vaccarello brought his interest in swimwear design into a collection that transformed the unique visuals of swimwear into wearable urban pieces, creating an aesthetic that fused sportswear and uniforms in a harmonious fashion. For Maxime Simoëns, the sportswear influence emerged through his use of trainers, zips and cutting techniques that referenced modern cyclists’s gear. The collection was light and airy with an effortless feeling of an active lifestyle but of one never having lost its sense of chic.

High-tech and comfortable fabrics like neoprene, breathable mesh, jersey and extra-light nylons appeared on the runway to powerful effect. Scott Sternberg, artistic director for Band of Outsiders, explored the technical qualities of sportswear design. In his collection for Band of Outsiders, he referenced this high-tech fashion mode with nylon parkas that could be transformed into skirts, shorts which were constructed around zippers, and sharp asymmetrical cuts. The highly technical show which resulted was sporty and body conscious, but with a desirable sensual edge.