I Need My Workout Clothes To Show My Nasty Sweat
Maybe I just need a $10 gray T-shirt after all.
Brief, very fab updates: Ultimate iron-pumper and Interview’s Mel Ottenberg is my next guest on NEVERWORNS…so stay tuned. Last week, I did a talk about the legendary reign of Jimmy Choo and their reissue collection with the hilarious and legendary costume designer Molly Rogers, who worked with Patricia Field on Sex and The City, and is now behind And Just Like That. (Yes, there will be a Choo moment in the upcoming season…) Read about the Choo lore here.
Below, here’s a piece about the simple pleasure of sweating in basics!
I love working out while wearing an old gray sweatshirt because I love to be sickly satisfied. I like to see the sweat pile up at my armpits, under my boobs, and leak around my neck. I’m soaked. I’m sodden.
In these sweltering moments, I feel like Rocky, who trains in shirts, sweatshirts, or tanks, typically all of which are gray. In a great montage on YouTube, the brolic boxer runs through the Philly streets in a hoodie the color of cement, and the sweat pools in the bull’s-eye canyon between his pecs. Another scene shows Rocky cranking out lateral raises in a slate-hued tank top. You know he’s working hard. You know he’s pushing himself. I came. I saw. I sweat.
Rocky’s look is a far cry from what I wore a year ago to work out. I’ve long been a runner, devouring miles and miles of asphalt, always sausage-stuffed into a pair of black spandex. The leggings looked great. Everything intact. Kevlar-cinched on my thighs. The same goes for my elastane sports bras. I looked like I was from the future. I was Park Slope’s Tomb Raider! Or the Lara Croft of Prospect Park, jogging the modest loop! I was dressed as if I were working out for a sleek apocalypse; my own little glandless Gattaca. Pure aerodynamic verve. All moisture wicked away. Not a droplet in sight.
My desire for this slick workout wear has been fading recently. I’ve had a baby, and my breasts and thighs have expanded. The spandex sports bras are all too tight, even painful. As for the leggings, it's a struggle to wriggle into them. Everything feels suffocating. Everything feels like it’s cutting off my circulation.
The solve? Or rather, the sweaty, natural fiber-packed salve? The other day, creative director Jen Brill posted a photo of a model doing a free-weight shoulder press, a soggy cigarette dangling from her mouth, in a gray spaghetti-strap Adidas tank top, the sweat puddling right into its ruched center. How perverse. How gratifying. Why did this image, coupled with those Rocky montages, make me want to run a zillion miles and deadlift something? Between the gray, the wetness, and that contrast, the viewer knows how much the subject worked out, which, judging by the sweat, is presumably a lot. And I love that wet trophy look.
Brill’s image and the Rocky moment hearken back to old-school workouts of the ‘70s and ‘80s. We saw so much gray cotton in those early years, especially in media and film because people needed to see what fitness was all about; they needed to understand the results of those press-ups; to visualize what it was like to marinate in those feel-good pheromones. It was all so new.
Still, spandex slowly crept into gyms and closets. In the ‘70s, there was a running boom. The sports bra was created. Cyclists switched their wool shorts for spandex iterations. In the ‘80s, there was the rise of aerobics. The era of exercise! (Remember that word?! It feels so dated.) Spandex began to make a more regular foray into wardrobes.
There are incredible editorials in early and mid-‘80s Vogue that show women clad in head-to-toe stretch looks. While Vogue was ahead of the curve, if you see a workout scene from a film from the ‘80s, there is a happy mix of ratty T-shirts and skimming spandex. You can see that mélange in the pelvic-thrusting scene from Perfect (1985) with Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta. The gym is crowded with LA gym-heads in both crack-engulfed singlets and tattered T-shirts. Travolta is air-cranking his package behind a woman whose tank top is sopping with sweat, waterfalling down from the nape.
As the ’90s approached, working out became more embedded in daily life—and so did the clothes. Out with the cotton, in with the stretch. Pieces became clingier and techier. All in the name of performance. And there’s no doubt that intense spandex makes someone feel like an athlete. There’s a great scene from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Dee and Dennis decide to start working out, and Dennis insists they need some “sick new outfits.” Dennis is out of his gray T-shirt, and the duo returns to the gym in spandexafied looks.
These days, I barely see people working out in standard cotton, aside from a T-shirt here or there. I want to think we are due for a change. Last week, my friend Sue Williamson sent me a pair of shorts and a top from her brand H.O.R.S.E. These were basic cotton shorts. Light yet girthy cotton. Au naturel. Williamson references the casual look of vintage P.E. classes. “Fitness has become so branded that in some cities it can feel like you can’t work out without a matching bra-legging set and a fancy workout class booked,” she wrote to me. “But all you really need is simple, comfortable clothes, and a little room for jumping jacks,” I told her I loved the pieces. Yes, the cut was great, riding up to the waist and lengthening the legs, but the fact that she used a natural fiber in workout wear? The simple act felt radical in a world full of man-made materials.
H.O.R.S.E. is a refreshing back-to-earth direction for workoutwear. Williamson notably uses fabrics from Japan and the United States, manufacturing everything in Los Angeles.
, who runs sweat-friendly, probiotic-brimming SNAKE Super Health, suggests that we may see more types of conscious workout clothes thanks to the growing concern about microplastics and their effects on the body. “The same questions people are asking about toxicity are happening with clothes, and they are moving away from polyblends and spandex,” Reiss told me in a voice note. (“A lot of cyclists and some freak raw milk ppl love merino,” he half-jokingly texted me). He’s not wrong: There are a handful of Reddit threads filled with people seeking more natural fabrics, like wool (no Superwash!). An article in The Guardian from 2023 discussed synthetic combinations and the release of chemicals when we sweat. “I hope to see more natural alternatives so we can have healthier clothing options to wear while we sweat,” says Williamson.
Maybe Williamson is onto something. I may look more filthy while working out, but I do feel cleaner in the non-synthetic garb. Still, healthy or not, don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing quite like the look of suction-me-in spandex, and I truly can’t imagine running something like a marathon in a pair of thick cotton sweatpants or even a sweatshirt. Though, I do love the idea of wearing a piece of gray cotton to see just how drenched I can get. And after all, if you sweat and can’t see it, did you actually ever sweat?
As for the workout pieces that I’m into…Eyeing? Buying? Bought?!