Can I Train in Sportswear?
In my experience, exercise dresses are mostly Instagram ads, and for a while I felt like Halara was trying to get them to appear on their own. But, according to two recent articles from New York newspapers ( New York Times and The Cut ), these things are everywhere (presumably in New York), and people are perplexed. What exercises should you do with them in general?
The authors of both articles have come to the conclusion that exercise dresses are made to look like you can exercise at any time, even if you don’t intend to. In other words, it is sportswear. Or, in other words, it’s a prettier and more socially acceptable alternative to sweatpants that you probably didn’t intend to sweat in.
But training in a dress isn’t such a weird idea. Tennis dresses were in the course of more than 100 years , and in the 2010s were popular jogging skirt .
Running clothes make sense: You usually want to wear thin, shrinkable shorts to prevent chafing , and many running shorts include a second layer on top of them. Why not make this second layer a skirt instead of shorts? I have found that runners speak well of exercise dresses on the forums , suggesting that the dresses work just fine – as long as they fit. (Some brands of shorts may bump in, be too tight, or too loose.)
Workout dresses look like they should be worn without a bra, which can limit your options. If you really want to work out in them, you probably want to wear a sports bra under them. For this reason, runners love dresses without a built-in bra. In the meantime, people wearing casual clothes often want dresses with a shelf bra (or even a more supportive built-in bra) to be more common.
Besides running and tennis, sports dresses can be used for a variety of workouts if you really want to. The skirt is short enough for cycling, and I found the chic dress interesting to wear to a zumba class. But if you just think exercise dresses are cute and don’t want to plan your workout around them, embrace your trendy fashion sense and wear them without exercising at all.