For years, I had a nemesis in the form of high-waisted, overpriced, black Lycra. Leggings were never my thing – not when they were being sold at Gilly Hicks and Nike in the Noughties and certainly not when they were being sold for double the price at Lululemon a decade later. So there was a major sigh of relief when I learnt that this once fashionable stretchy item had fallen out of favour among the cool kids. That’s right, Gen Z thinks leggings are lame, which means all of us must stop wearing them immediately. Let’s hold hands and start a loose-fitting revolution together. Please.
At least that’s the takeaway in a recent report titled “The Death of Leggings?” by retail analyst group Edited, which examined the item’s decreasing popularity in the US over the last three years. In 2022, 46.9 per cent of all athleisure bottoms were leggings. By 2025, that number had dropped to 38.7 per cent. Industry insiders, meanwhile, have been saying for some time that tighter workout gear was being usurped by baggier, 1990s-inspired silhouettes.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Emily Oberg, founder of the It-girl athleisure brand Sporty and Rich, explained how looser fits are the new sartorial power move in the workout world. “A super fit girl hiding her body under baggy clothes is more appealing than skimpy, tight workout clothes,” she told the publication. In July, Vogue called for fashion fans to “forget” their leggings, heralding the return of vintage items in the gym instead. Gone is the ubiquity of high-street leggings that will set you back £100 or more a pop; the publication said its key workout look references were Madonna and Princess Diana circa 1990. Think cycling shorts, basketball shorts, adidas tracksuit bottoms, and boxy slogan T-shirts.
“It’s not just activewear – we’re seeing a bigger, baggier silhouette dominating fashion across the board,” says Annabelle Sacher, fashion PR expert at MediaVision. “This trend taps into nostalgia and self-expression at the same time. Baggy silhouettes are versatile, practical, and effortlessly cool – whether you’re hitting the streets, the pitch, or just running errands.”
There’s a sustainability angle to all this, too, given that a lot of traditional activewear contains plastics. See this article decrying the “synthetic” quality of most clingy workout garb. “There’s almost no non-plastic in sportswear these days,” Great British Sewing Bee judge Patrick Grant told the StyleDNA podcast in an interview last year, as he called for people to rethink their workout wardrobes. “Nobody needed figure-hugging bum-tight leggings. We all lived perfectly happily without them until big juicy bums came into fashion.”
Honestly, after years of trying and failing to get to grips with leggings, I couldn’t agree more – which brings me back to my nemesis. It started at school, when friends would parade around in leggings, strappy tops, and old T-shirts. Back then, leggings were purely a fashion item. Something to be worn with ballet flats on a day out. The innocence of that, though, was quickly stripped away: boys would ogle over the way the girls’ bodies looked in leggings, making you either smug or self-conscious.
For me, it was always the latter. And after a few too many disparaging comments from those aforementioned boys about the shape of my legs (teenagers can be so cruel), a lifelong insecurity about the bottom half of my body was born. Leggings, I decided, made me feel too “on display”. It was only in university when I started exercising that I had to confront my fear head-on because, well, they were the most practical workout item. It was time to get on board. If only I found the perfect pair with just the right amount of lining and panelling, then I could finally learn to love my legs.
Of course, that never happened. Instead, I continued to look at friends who swanned around all day in the things with envy. Regardless of how leggings actually looked on me – I’m sure now they looked completely fine – in my head I looked like a monster. This taps into a wider conversation around the kinds of bodies we accept and tolerate versus the ones we celebrate and champion. The idea that leggings were not designed for bodies like mine didn’t come from nowhere. It was part of my social conditioning, a message espoused by every women’s magazine offering tips on how to “slim down” and every advertisement for a gym or workout brand.
As was the case back then, the campaigns for the top athleisure brands continue to be almost exclusively fronted by tall, slim women with impossibly pert bottoms. Then there are the myriad paparazzi photos of famous women emerging from their pilates gyms, all lithe in their Lulu leggings, with an iced matcha latte in one hand and a $20 Erewhon smoothie in the other.
For all our supposed societal progression, the truth remains that a brand breaking away from the aesthetic norm is so out of the ordinary that diverse casting is still somehow cause for applause – which almost instantly undoes any benefit it might have in the first place. If someone larger than a UK size 10 dares to put on a pair of leggings, is it really something people need to talk about? I’m not convinced. Doing so, I’d argue, reinforces the narrative that only certain body types can quietly and acceptably wear leggings. Everyone else is an exception.
I’ve worked on my body confidence a lot over the years, and I no longer have the same insecurities. That said, I still don’t love wearing leggings to the gym. Call it a trauma response, or maybe I just think they’re a little bit boring and predictable, but they just aren’t for me. Hence why I welcome the return of a more nostalgic, retro-inspired workout look with open arms. Now, my workout uniform – lime green adidas tracksuit bottoms and slogan vintage Tees baggy enough to whip off in an instant – isn’t only comfortable, it’s cool.
Even the glossy high street brands have started taking note. At Alo, there’s a new range of wide-leg trousers, including a pinstriped boxer-style option and a combat jogger. Over at Lululemon, one of the key drivers behind the OG legging trend, the Align Palazzo pant – a loose, pleated pair of trousers designed for yoga – is a recent bestseller. Also embodying the Nineties aesthetic are their cinchable cuff high-rise jogger trousers that look like something out of a Spice Girls music video.
If even the original leggings juggernauts are broadening their horizons, it’s clear that finally the tide is turning. Of course, if you feel confident in leggings, go forth – but personally, I couldn’t be happier to see the backs of them.
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