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It wasn’t all that long ago—March 2024, in fact—that Outdoor Voices closed all of its stores and seemed on the way to bankruptcy. Three months later, the licensing firm Consortium swept in to rescue the O.G. activewear brand from that fate. Now, as Lauren recently reported, Outdoor Voices has hired back its indisputably talented founder, Ty Haney, to help relaunch the brand that gave us the “exercise dress” and, in its early years, made athleisure cool. But Haney, who was ousted as C.E.O. in 2020, is returning to a very different market—one that’s saturated with activewear brands that drew inspiration from O.V.’s early success.

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Indeed, Haney’s innovations—such as making a tennis dress acceptable for everything from hiking Runyon Canyon to grabbing a matcha, or hosting classes and creating a community vibe at retail locations—are now commonplace. Leggings paired with a blazer–cardigan–button-up are everywhere. And while part of Outdoor Voices 2.0’s value proposition is offering a uniform for “doing things” that consists of more than just typical exercise pieces—they’re mixing in cotton-cashmere cardigans, for example—they’re no longer the only brand thinking this way.

Companies like Alo Yoga, Vuori, and Beyond Yoga are chasing the same customer. Meanwhile, sales of leggings are dropping, making up just 40 percent of all activewear bottoms, according to Edited—down from nearly 50 percent three years ago. Brands are pivoting, with some of Lululemon’s latest delivery feeling more Skims-lite than sporty.

The market reality is that everyone has enough basic black leggings in their drawer. What’s driving purchases is genuine material innovation. To wit: Outdoor Voices is rolling out bubble-wrap compression technology (we’ll see how it sells and what it feels like); Lululemon has removed the center seams from their popular Align leggings; and Vuori has tweaked their color palette, swapping the muted, greyscale colors we saw in previous deliveries for viridian, nutmeg, a French blue, and a sunny yellow. Meanwhile, Athleta just hired a new C.E.O. from Nike, Maggie Gauger, to reset the brand and tackle declining sales. Gauger has a tough job, given that Gap’s Athleta comp store sales were down 8 percent for Q1 2025 versus last year. Athleta’s position—with prices slightly lower than customer favorites Lululemon and Vuori, but no real differentiation in assortment—is not an enviable one.

As for the immediate future of certain athleisure brands: Alo Yoga, despite its 3.5 million-plus Instagram followers, may have missed its window for a sale or an I.P.O. at a peak price. (Two years ago, the brand was reportedly seeking investors at a $10 billion valuation.) Meanwhile, Old Navy has become a formidable opponent in the sporty game, as highlighted during Q1 2025 earnings, which reported that their active line was the No. 5 brand in the category. After all, having an opening price point—and the whole family under one retail roof—has its benefits.

Has activewear peaked? Are “plastic-free” leggings and new lines of 100 percent cotton activewear signs of innovation, or desperation? Even the “tech pants” favored by frequent-flying Silicon Valley bros are looking kind of icky these days.

On changing tastes: “I’ve been ruminating lately on whether luxury handbags/It bags/logo bags are going to be considered relics of a prior generation by Gen Z and Gen Alpha—similar to how hats fell out of fashion at the end of the 1950s, as Bill Cunningham wrote about in his memoir. Suddenly the younger generation decided that hats were out, and that was that. Based on what Gens Z and Alpha are spending their money on now, it doesn’t seem like they’re going to grow up to buy luxury handbags. Not that the handbag industry is going to collapse overnight, but we may be at the beginning of the end.” —A lawyer

On the possibility of Architectural Digest’s Amy Astley moving over to Vogue: “Amy is the only person at Condé Nast who actually has celeb friends and uses them well for her magazine.” —A former Condé person

On the power of Claire’s: “There was a Claire’s in a mall somewhere in Fairfield County, Connecticut, that had a sign in the window that said, ‘Ears pierced while you wait.’ As if you had a choice—Actually, I’ll leave my ears here, get an Orange Julius, and come back. This remains my favorite sign ever. It would be sad to see the chain go.” —A senior publicist

Have a great weekend,
Lauren

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