At a faux \u201cpubby\u201d restaurant, I asked a friend why she didn\u2019t order fries with the fried fish she had asked for? (I was looking for a carb-fat fix, but couldn\u2019t legitimately order a whole portion just for myself.)<\/p>\n
A withering look accompanied the dismissal, \u201cYou and your excesses!\u201d<\/p>\n
Undeterred, I went on, \u201cBut if I suggested having fish and chips?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, that would be a fine. That\u2019s standard British fare.\u201d \u00a0That clinched it for me. \u201cSo it\u2019s okay to have it when you call it fish and chips, but not if you ask for \u201cfried fish and fries\u201d?!\u201d<\/p>\n
[After all, the Brits call French fries chips. The stuff that the Americans call \u2018chips\u2019 are actually called \u2018crisps\u2019 by the Brits \u2013 more logical, isn\u2019t it? After all, the fries are not really crispy so it wouldn\u2019t do to call those crisps!]<\/p>\n
This kind of dilemma generally doesn\u2019t bother the rest of the world \u2013 they either pick British English, or American (more and more), or just dispense with English altogether. But for Indians it can be quite puzzling and troublesome, especially those that have pedigreed \u201cconvent-education\u201d \u2013 i.e. whose teachers were also \u2018convent-educated\u2019, and have drilled in the \u201cproper\u201d (i.e. British) spellings and names \u2013 and they run into Americanized environments such as food courts.<\/p>\n
That led us on to a profound discussion about one of the most global and globally visible businesses \u2013 fashion \u2013 and how it binds the world together.<\/p>\n
One would think that, as a globalised business, at least the fashion arena would be more inclusive and speak a common language. It does, mostly.<\/p>\n
Till you hit \u2018Sportswear\u2019. It is a little strange.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure there is a conspiracy afoot \u2013 though I\u2019m not sure who\u2019s behind it, or who\u2019s the target. All I know that it gets very confusing.<\/p>\n
The first \u2013 most obvious and logical \u2013 image that springs to mind is that of athletes, active sports, and performance. \u00a0Caps, headbands, T-shirts and sweats, wrist bands, shorts, track pants, terry socks \u2013 you get the picture.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s quite clear.<\/p>\n
You may be on the treadmill trying to lose weight, or on the court just keeping fit, or even on the fairways networking with your peers \u2013 there is an action-orientation as there is activity involved and a sporting game (whether team or individual).<\/p>\n
There is a need for comfort and freedom of movement, a need for allowing sweat to evaporate and keep the body cool (but not too cold in case you are playing in the colder climes), and sometimes a need to prevent the odd wobble.<\/p>\n
There is certain kind of clothing that fits the bill, and all of it is not appropriate to all sporting occasions or types of sport. For instance, swimwear on the tennis court may make the game more interesting to the spectators, but is of very little practical value to the players. (Having said that, \u201cconvergence\u201d is a big buzzword nowadays, and some of the recent trends in women\u2019s tennis apparel seem to be leading to the same conclusion.)<\/p>\n
Good, then, you say \u2013 sportswear should be quite, quite clear \u2013 it is functional, and meant to enable specific performance.<\/p>\n
Or is it?<\/p>\n
Scan the websites, shelves or magazines, and the variety of merchandise that parades under the sportswear banner quickly dispenses with that image. \u00a0The category encompasses \u2018sports-inspired fashion\u2019 (and a truly inspired marketing person must have thought up that term) to casualwear, to clubwear, to the \u2018I don\u2019t know where-to wear\u2019.<\/p>\n
The sports-inspired look that grew big a few decades ago (think sweatshirts, track pants and sneakers) \u2026 and for some brands it seems to have become big again in recent times. The link back to active sportswear is quite clear in terms of styling, fabric and so on, so the use of the term is understandable.<\/p>\n
The sporting brands also wanted new avenues to grow.<\/p>\n
So you\u2019ve got adidas, Reebok, Nike and their ilk doing casualwear or \u2018leisurewear\u2019, even as they plaster the billboards with sportspeople from basketball, football, cricket, and other games. But it\u2019s not their problem \u2013 if someone with a \u2018comfortable\u2019 Body Mass Index wants to emulate the active image of Shaq or Air Jordan without really meaning to get down to the court, who is the brand to complain? Just make the \u2018sporty\u2019 clothes looser, bigger.<\/p>\n
But somewhere along the way, sportswear seems to have become the \u2018catchall\u2019 category \u2013 a melting pot of styling (or the dustbin of style cues), depending on whether your perspective is inspired or inspiration-challenged.<\/p>\n
For instance, it is easy to imagine that somewhere along the way, someone who did great T-shirts thought that actually he could increase his sales by selling jeans and chinos as well. And then others caught on to the trick. \u00a0Since these brands were already labeled sportswear, the definition stretched and then expanded to accommodate \u2013 just as sportswear does!<\/p>\n
So now it is understandable to find some casualwear masquerading as sportswear.<\/p>\n
But then you have menswear clearly targeted at the sport of \u2018pulling birds\u2019 and the womenwear geared for hunting at night. What should be clearly labeled clubwear is pretending to be casualwear and inching surreptitiously close to the sportswear label.<\/p>\n
Then, there are these preppy types bringing on their University-team type look.<\/p>\n
And the \u2018ethnic\u2019 print inspired skimpy halters and skirts whose only sporty function is to increase the heart-rate (the onlooker\u2019s, not of the person wearing them).<\/p>\n
The big thing about sportswear is \u2018cool\u2019. \u00a0Often it is about cutting edge. \u00a0So if the \u2018cutting edge\u2019 style looks like it won\u2019t remain alive long enough to become a category by itself, it\u2019s conveniently shoved into the sportswear category.<\/p>\n
Sportswear is about slick and quick. It\u2019s so fluid, so large, and so all-encompassing and messy (where are the boundaries?), that if there is a businessperson wanting to grow a brand fast, sportswear would be the category to follow.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s clearly a category for the Indian market, because there are plenty of bright young businesspeople who want to grow it big and quick.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m expecting a sportswear deluge. Just don\u2019t ask me for figures or growth projections \u2013 let\u2019s just say, they are elastic and accommodating like the category.<\/p>\n
[Just to complete the story I began with \u2013 I got my friend\u2019s fries, and wolfed them down, the waist elastic of the sports-inspired track pants expanding comfortably. None of that clubwear masquerading as sportswear for me \u2013 I was geared for the active sport of mall-crawl.<\/p>\n
My friend meanwhile was going on about this particular store in New York, when I said, \u201cI didn\u2019t know they had shops for people interested is the social and historical study of mankind.\u201d And that started a whole new argument \u2013 but that\u2019s another story for another time.]<\/p>\n
[This was the closing column “Checkout” for the inaugural issue of the Indian edition of Sportswear International<\/strong>.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One would think that, as a globalised business, at least the fashion arena would be more inclusive and speak a common language. It does, mostly. Till you hit \u2018Sportswear\u2019. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27,212,33,60,36,37,131,43,44,46,48,1],"tags":[134,26,99,52,28,32,59,115,82,120,156,430],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apparel","category-branding","category-consumer","category-footwear","category-india","category-lifestyle-fashion","category-marketing","category-product-development-and-design","category-retail","category-soft-goods","category-strategy","category-textiles","category-uncategorized","tag-adidas","tag-apparel","tag-brand","tag-branding","tag-clothing","tag-fashion","tag-india","tag-lifestyle","tag-lifestyle-fashion","tag-marketing","tag-reebok","tag-sportswear"],"yoast_head":"\n