Sport is an important part of many people’s lives—as both recreation and entertainment. It is also a sizeable industry with political and economic ramifications in today’s world. Within the last half-century or so, sportswear has become a driving force for new trends in fashion and for textile innovation.
This special issue of Fashion Practice was inspired by the “Spandex to Sportstech—Fashion and Innovation in Sportswear” conference, organized in 2011 by guest editor Mette BielefeldtBruun at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen.
All articles are situated within the second half of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century. They deal with sportswear in a Western world heavily influenced by popular cults of youth and fitness, sparking health clubs and gyms, and indoor training and commercial fitness centers. A more recent development, also treated in these pages, is the inclusion of heretofore marginalized groups as active participants in sports.
– Tejasvi Gurjar
