Sports Wear

Sportswear also known as Active-wear is the clothing which is suitable for wearing while taking
exercises during sports time. These clothes are designed in such a way that it gives maximum
comfort to the consumers during active period. It consists of separate pieces that may be “mixed
and matched,” a merchandising term meaning that articles of clothing are designed to be
coordinated in different combinations: trousers or shorts or skirts with shirts (either woven or
knit, with or without collars, long-sleeved or short) and sweaters (either pullovers or cardigans)
or jackets of a variety of sorts. The global market for sportswear is tremendously booming
because of the rising participation in fitness and sports activities, among the people of all ages.

Relation to sports:
Active sports uniforms and clothing grew out of necessity. Players needed protection from bodily
harm in contact sports like football, hockey, cricket etc.; they also needed to let the body breathe
and enable it to move as easily and freely as possible while performing the sport. sportswear
concerns the fashionable aspect of clothing for sport rather than the athletic. Comfort is the main
reason for the influence of sportswear on every day and leisure wear. sportswear has other
features such as durability, strength, stretch ability, elastic recovery, abrasion resistance, tear
resistance, color fading, body odor resistance and UV resistance, which make sportswear
irreplaceable for the consumers in sport purpose. Individual items such as jerseys, sweaters, and
turtlenecks came directly out of active sports. Certain jackets also became linked with sports and
therefore sportswear.

Historical Background:
Sportswear can be called the contribution of America in the world of fashion. It is hard to believe
that, in the 1920s, sportswear was the term used to describe the comfortable and casual clothes of
women which are worn to watch spectator sports. In the mid of 1970s, Bruce Lee was credited
for bringing the classic stretchy tracksuit into mainstream fashion. Suddenly it became fashion to
wear athletic tracksuits in polyester, cotton, terrycloth and velour for wearing during casual
activities.

After that, in 1985 Richard Martin put on an exhibition on sportswear at the Fashion Institute of
Technology, in which sportswear was described as “an American invention, an American
industry and an American expression of style”. For Martin, American sportswear was an
expression of various mainly middle-class aspects of American culture, including health ideals,
the concept of democracy, ideas of comfort and function, and innovative design which might
refer to historical concepts or leisure attributes.
Problems in traditional apparel used in sportswear
 Sweating, which stick the fabric with body
 Feeling hot during run
 Improper stretch ability, improper flexibility.
 Extra weight of the fabric
 Can’t give protection to body skin during fall on the ground.
 Inadequate fabric for fluid resistance for swimmer.
 Can’t produce windproof and waterproof fabric.
 Light Weight shoe with proper strength and air circulation impossible.
 Improper gripping of the shoes during run.
Top Brands for Sportswear

The sportswear world is minting gold. There are more than a few hundred
sportswear brands on the global stage, where the leading brands are –
1. Obermeyer

2. Nike

3. Montbell
4. Adidas

5. Volcom

6. Under armour

7. Puma