Anti-Polyester Girls and the Alt-Right American Cotton Ideal
Words: Tanya Fevzi
The fashion-first, feminine athleisure wear of the noughties is a distant memory. Low-rise velour flares, colourful capris, zip ups and micro tennis skirts have been widely replaced by figure-hugging, soulless matching gym sets in the 2010s. Leggings and sports bras made from varying forms of chemically processed materials have been the go-to choices of workout fashion since curves started trending.
Lululemon, Alo Yoga, and Gymshark are some of the big names that have defined fitness fashion ideals based on a culture of gym-goers willing to settle for carbon-copied designs of athleisure that caters to the ‘clean girl’ and ‘that girl’ digital aesthetic. Activewear brands on the ‘nicher’, or somewhat ‘cooler’ side, like Adanola, OYSHO and TALA, sell the same tired sets as mainstream brands. It is an uncanny capitalist phenomenon - or great marketing technique - that these brands continue to succeed without any sign of innovation.
Over the last year, gym girls demanding individuality have begun to trickle onto our algorithms and slowly, the landscape is shifting in a direction that encourages fitness and fashion to coexist. Influencers are looking to the it-girls of the 2000s for inspiration: Madonna in Ed Hardy, Britney Spears in velour, and Princess Diana in cycling shorts and a Harvard sweatshirt. It’s easy to feel nostalgia for the era even if you were not a part of it; the lack of online exposure to fashion trends and structures meant the girlies of the noughties were having fun with pairing textures, mismatched patterns and funky colours. The lawless fashion culture of the era is enviable.
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In a small corner of the internet, there is a movement that seeks to dismantle rigid athleisure fashion structures - both aesthetically and environmentally. Enter the anti-polyester girl: as well as rejecting modern athleisure, she approaches her fashion choices eco-consciously. She wants to workout in clothes that are both styled and expressive as well as ethically-made.
Fast fashion is a no-go, and she wants to know where the raw materials she’s wearing came from. Natural fibres are the bare minimum. It is a movement that sits in dangerous territory because it confronts the very real and valid opposition to synthetic petroleum-based plastics, while risking becoming an alt-right pipeline built on ideals of returning to the ‘American fabric’ of cotton. These ideals could present cotton as a nostalgic symbol of cultural purity instead of an environmental alternative.
Polyester did, after all, overtake cotton as the most popular textile fibre in 2000 and its production doubled by 2021. This transition, from the perspective of the alt-right, represents the failure of shifting away from domestic manufacturing to imported materials from countries like China. Trump’s ‘Made in America’ push has been blatant, through vows to cut taxes on American companies making products in America, but this is unrealistic as importing - at least for now - is cheaper.
American cotton pride is a real thing and the anti-polyester movement risks falling into a similar category of Make America Great Again as trad wives and crunch lifestyle, which refer to the holistic and natural lifestyles which emphasise sustainability and health - by taking steps like reducing synthetic toxins. Coming into the anti-polyester discourse from a crunchy perspective is very different from that of young women in the wellness space who genuinely care about sustainability.
Shelby Laine is a Bali-based yoga teacher who promotes non-toxic, natural fibre clothing to an audience concerned with wellness. Her style might be compared to that of Christy Turlington in her yoga era - the 90s supermodel whose iconic black and white yoga shoot was published in Shape Magazine in 2002 to promote the launch of her book Living Yoga: Creating a Life Practise. Turlington is still the aesthetic ideal today as she fits the Western image of yoga - its distance from the authentic Indian practise is another issue.
“This conscious consumerism is becoming increasingly marketable as consumers are becoming more invested in what they wear. Movements like the anti-polyester one, though, can sometimes be based on misunderstandings, and often ignore the reality of why some brands use polyester.”
Shelby popularised the ‘what I wear to yoga as an anti-polyester girl’ trend, in which she prances around in flowy trousers and cotton tops, often promoting sustainable and ethically made pieces by Indigo Luna Store - an Australian-born but Bali-based yoga brand. Brands like this, which are built on delivering environmental targets and condemning materials like polyester, are popping up more and more. Nadia New York, Flora, and Studio K by Miki West are a few popular names in this fast-growing version of athleisure. Each has a unique aesthetic brand identity and a strong Instagram presence, which is part of the appeal of shopping from these smaller brands. Influencers like Shelby, whose social media presences are built on making eco-conscious fashion choices, become the perfect collaborators for these alternative active wear brands.
Nadia New York is described by its founder, fashion girly Alyssa Moseley, as ‘an anti-matching set activewear brand’. Alyssa has been involved in the athleisure discourse for a long time and has talked about the expressiveness and personality that sportswear embodied in the 2000s, which she feels was a fantasy rather than just a performance. After all, don’t we all just want to play dress-up?
Alyssa joined me on video call - wearing a Puma Nuala cotton top by Christy Turlington no less - to discuss Nadia and her intentions behind the brand. She said: “Nadia was sort of born out of a frustration for a lack of elevated fashion-forward pieces in the active wear market. I just wanted a place where I could go that had all of the items I was looking for - jackets, outerwear, leg warmers, cool stuff. And so I was like, ‘I'm just gonna start making the clothes I want to wear’.”
She continues, “My goal is to inspire creative people to take care of their body because I know when I was working in fashion, it was very much the opposite. It's like, ‘let's drink all the time’, ‘let's smoke’. Working out is not really part of the lifestyle. I hope through Nadia, I can create inspiring pieces that capture the attention of creative people and get them moving their body too.”
The former styling assistant’s arguments against modern day gym sets goes beyond design; she yearns for the creative marketing of the noughties, like Nike’s collab with Blythe dolls in 2000 and the 2005 Bratz sports line. This playful intersection of fitness and fashion simply does not exist today, but Alyssa is creating Nadia with the intention of bringing it back.
Although she doesn’t describe herself as ‘anti-polyester,’ the movement is still on her mind. She originally planned to use the material in her Nadia pieces, but recently decided to switch to cotton, in line with the vintage active wear she’s inspired by. She said: “I just love the way it feels on my body and I love how casual and elevated it looks rather than a polyester.”
Brands like Nadia are for people who are intentional about what they wear, be it the fabric, the quality or the design. This conscious consumerism is becoming increasingly marketable as consumers are becoming more invested in what they wear. Movements like the anti-polyester one, though, can sometimes be based on misunderstandings, and often ignore the reality of why some brands use polyester.
Financial accessibility is, of course, highly relevant when talking about shopping at independents and being picky about the materials you wear. Indigo Luna Store’s Bella Bamboo Capris are made from 96% soft bamboo viscose and only 4% spandex, and cost £59. In comparison, Lululemon’s Groove Nulu High-Rise Flared Pants, costing £108, and Alo’s Airbrush High-Waist Heart Throb Legging’s, costing £128, are both made from 81% nylon and 19% spandex - entirely synthetic petroleum-based plastics. These are all expensive, unfortunately, but it’s interesting that shopping eco-consciously does not necessarily mean paying more than you would if you were buying from the most popular athleisure brands.
At the end of the day, the anti-polyester movement is a marketing opportunity and many brands will want to appeal to their largest possible audience, regardless of their political leanings. Some will make this appeal, or distract their audiences, through greenwashing: making inauthentic claims of being environmentally friendly. The initiation of the discourse around modern day gym sets - whether through an environmental or fashion lens - is at least a reassuring step in the right direction.
