In recent years, one of the styles that has grown the most and has undoubtedly became a trend is the Athleisure. As its name suggests, this trend unify the concepts “athletic” and “leisure” and aims to combine the qualities of sports garments with fashion garments, making them suitable for both sports and day to day wear. To achieve this fusion, athleisure fabrics play a fundamental role.
The growing demand for more versatile, comfortable and stylish sportswear has led the textile industry to adapt its offer of fabrics, and pushing the majority of sports and fashion brands to create their own athleisure line.
GARMENTS AND FABRICS FOR ATHLEISURE
Athleisure fabrics are characterized by being high quality fabrics focused on breathability, quick drying, odor control, UV protection and the need to create anti-wrinkle garments. In addition, when talking of leggings, these fabrics must be compressive, opaque and resistant. All these characteristics come together to provide the comfort and technicality necessary to create an athleisure garment.
The athleisure style is clearly influenced by specific sports. In the case of women’s garments, the influence of yoga stands out. The most used garments are short tops, tacksuits in fun colours, or the key garment, leggings, also in many different colours and patterns.
Men’s athleisure is clearly influenced by running and fitness clothing. Thus, the most popular garments are the joggers, windproof jackets, hoodies and basic t-shirts in different colours, melange or with specific prints.
SPW FABRICS AND THE ATHLEISURE
At SPW Fabrics we have developed our collection of high quality athleisure fabrics from polyester fibers, cationic polyester, polyamide and elastomer.
FOR T-SHIRTS
We can categorize athleisure collection fabrics according to the garment we want to focus on. T-shirts are a basic piece of athleisure apparel and their main technical qualities should be breathability, odor control and UV protection. Our fabric Timon meets all these qualities, it is a fine gauge smooth knit fabric in cationic polyester of 85g/m2. It is a melange fabric which gives the garment a distinctive and elegant touch. As heavy options (140g/m2) we have Belice, another polyester melange fabric, and Dongo a double-faced fabric with microfiber, with one face in melange and the other mini jacquard.
Furthermore, the more technical athleisure shirts tend to be stretchy. We offer stretch fabrics for tight shirts. Our alternatives are the fabric Sixto, a 155g/m2 fine gauge interlock with Clean Cut technology, and Socrates, a fine gauge plain knit, slightly lighter at 115g/m2, both melange fabrics for comfortable tight shirts.
FOR INSERTS: STRUCTURES AND MESHES
Athleisure is a trend that mixes the strenghts of sports with those of fashion. For this reason, it is mandatory to have fabrics with new designs, structures or meshes, to achieve a more elegant and innovative look. In the case of structures, we have fabrics such as Ander, Chaman, Albert and Verona all of them light fabrics with different designs. When talking about meshes, fabrics as Ipanema, Kandy, Rudy, Roatan or Kabul, will provide transparency and an extra breathability to the garment.
FOR TRACKSUITS AND SWEATSHIRTS
Other key garments of the athleisure style are the sweatshirts and tracksuits. We offer heavy and comfortable fabrics for this type of garment. On one side, the Lionel, an elastic and reversible double-faced fabric, 260g/m2 with polyester combined with an elastane knit. One of the faces has a mini jacquard structure while the other is plain melange. This way, with the same fabric you can get different patterns in the same garment. On the other side, the alternative fabric for sweatshirts and tracksuits is Urko, a 100% polyester melange single jersey. In the case of needing garments that provide more warmth comfort, we offer brushed fabrics such as Rancho that will help maintain body temperature.
THE KEY GARMENT OF ATHLEISURE: THE LEGGINGS
As we have previously said, leggings are considered the key garment of the athleisure. Leggings fabrics should be of high quality, with good elasticity and compression, resistant and opaque. In addition, they must be easy to print fabrics, since prints play a fundamental role in this garment.
The fabrics that SPW Fabrics offers for the manufacture of Leggings are interlock fabrics with heavy weights, composed of polyamide and polyester fibers, or recycled fibers. All of them are compression fabrics with a high percentage of Lycra® or elastane. Its construction allows the manufacture of garments without seams and Clean Cut.
Some of our leggings fabrics are Sonder (215g/m2) and Skinner (220g/m2), both made of polyester and high percentage of elastane. As an alternative to polyester we offer Bogota, our key fabric for cycling shorts, also suitable for leggings. Thanks to its 26% elastane we achieve a highly compressive and compact fabric, allowing to create sculpting, comfortable leggings, without transparencies and with a high resistance to abrasion. Bogota is available in Bogota Black, made from Lycra Black® and black polyamide dyed yarn ensuring the deepest black and an ecological dyeing process, in Bogota Printed with which we can print any design to create the most colorful leggings.
HEAVIER FABRICS FOR LEGGINGS: 0 TRANSPARENCIES
If more coverage is necessary, we have heavier fabrics such as Bruce, a 260g/m2 fabric with a softer touch, designed for less intense physical activities, as it has less compression, but very suitable for the manufacture of greater comfort garments.
RECYCLED FABRICS FOR LEGGINGS
In addition, because the athleisure spirit is closely linked with responsible and ethical lifestyles with the environment, we have incorporated sustainable fabrics ECOREC® to our collection. For example, the recycled polyester fabric R+Merida, a 210g/m2 fabric, not as compressive as Bogota but which provides high coverage and high degree of comfort. This is a printable fabric and it is available for custom colours.
DOUBLE FACED FABRICS: EXTRA QUALITY FOR LEGGINGS
Lastly, if what we want is to give a distinctive and quality touch to the leggings, we have developed fabrics such as Joker Black, a fabric with a black face made from polyester black dyed yarn, and another face from white polyester to sublimate or dye in any colour. Thanks to this fabric we can create garments with prints or colour on the outside and black on the inside, giving the legging a much more technical and quality look. We also have the inverted version Benji, with the black face made of black polyester dyed yarn and the white or colour face, made of polyamide. The white polyamide face makes it possible to create higher quality prints, both of which, thanks to their weight, provide good opacity and comfort.
Do you want to create your next atleisure garments? We can help you! Take a look at all our athleisure fabrics by entering our search menu and selecting the “Athleisure” market, or contact us and we will answer all your queries.