Fashion is like a buffet—it offers a little bit of everything from comfort to bold and daring. 2023/24 will have exciting moments, with the fashion industry hovering somewhere between embracing nostalgic items from the past and seeking futuristic pieces. And that’s all the creative reset trend seeks to capture; the past, present, and future.
This trend highlights uniqueness and inventiveness while staying within the limits of design. Discover various brilliant active forecast trends with irresistible potential in 23/24.
Table of Contents
What is the potential of the activewear market?
Eye-catching creative reset color trends for A/W 23/24
Rounding up
What is the potential of the activewear market?
In 2021, the worldwide activewear market generated an impressive $303.44 billion value. Marketing experts predict the industry will grow at a CAGR of 5.8% over the forecast period (2022 to 2028).
Activewear is one of the rapidly expanding clothing markets. Sports-specific clothing improves body movement and provides proper fit and support, preventing muscle hyperextensions and other tendon and muscle-related injuries.
People are becoming more conscious of their health and seeking out fitness and health activities like yoga, sports, and workout, leading to an increased demand for activewear.
The women’s segment dominated the global market by accounting for over 60.0% of the total revenue. Experts anticipate the men’s segment will expand at a CAGR of 4.8% from 2022 to 2028.
Regionally, North America emerged as the top contributor, accounting for over 35.0% of the 2021 revenue share. As for Asia Pacific, it will grow at a CAGR of 8.1% from 2022 to 2028.
Eye-catching creative reset color trends for A/W 23/24
Grunge romance
The 90s are back with a little touch of edge and luxe. Since its inception in the 1980s, grunge fashion has always rocked the fashion world with its slouchy and almost-thoughtless appeal. However, the trend is back again as a mainstay of mood boards, especially since rappers now showcase the style popularized by West Coast guitar bands.
Grunge is all about downplaying the body’s outline and appearing “untidy”. Its aesthetics mimics the cool appearance of heavy metal musicians and punk rock bands. Pulling off a blatantly grunge-inspired look requires mastery of strategic layering and an understanding of proportionate dressing.
Sportswear designers have dressed up what is fresh, young, and youthful with luxe cast-off-themed fits wearers can make their own—and retailers can leverage this for more sales.
Retailers can tap into this trend with distressed tops and bottoms, like black clothes, acid-washed shirts, baggy pants, and flannel jackets. Fishnets also revive with irresistible aesthetics. Consumers can rock modular components by layering them for more warmth during winter or detach them for functionality and performance in autumn.
Ground control
Things are about to get intergalactic! Although fashion and rocket science feel like different entities, the ground control trend takes cues from the Milky Way and beyond, inspiring futuristic designs and technologies.
Ground control-themed activewear promises an out-of-the-world experience in practical apparel that is also super cool. Items under this trend fit snugly on the body, supporting weak areas and providing compression. Thanks to supportive materials and space-inspired technology, ground control aims to improve posture and enhance exercise while promoting style.
Fluid careers
Before now, staying committed to fitness goals while juggling a 9-5 or even multiple-hour shift job was quite challenging. But work dress codes are relaxing, making it possible to go to work in athleisure outfits. Now, businesses can leverage this by offering smart-casual variations of the tiring corporate-appropriate ensemble. Consumers easily transition from work to workout sessions with fluid careers themes.
Moreover, it’s essential to stay away from athletic wear with spandex, garish prints, or overly vivid colors, as well as anything transparent, low-cut, or too tight when dressing professionally.
Regardless, consumers can throw on a causal blazer over their trendy activewear. Alternatively, they can wear a tunic top, sweatshirt, or fitted long-sleeve.
Art-letes
On the eve of their Olympic debut, skateboarding uniforms made a splash online, from bright vests to white overalls and everything in between. The art-lete trend rose from that event to become one of the many ways art, fashion, and function combine to make outstanding pieces.
This new trend encourages users to mix and match with their favorite essentials, allowing them to express their unique styles. It also fosters friendship, inclusivity, and community building. Customers who value these qualities over glitzy culture will also warm up to this trend.
Retailers can capitalize on the growing popularity and acceptance of skateboarding as a sport with activewear that appeals to young athletes. Designs like simple expressive patterns and motifs on oversized tops or bottoms are perfect examples of styles under this trend. These pieces should also play with proportions and silhouette, allowing gender-neutral gears to have more commercial appeal—especially for the younger demographic.
Dopamine minimalism
This trend embodies conflict, making it a source of stylish outfits. Seeing that dopamine dressing entails going all out in bright colors and eye-catching patterns, mixing such hues with minimalism creates an eye-catching contrast.
Dopamine minimalism provides inspiring and invigorating psychological benefits in colors and styles that fit the wearer perfectly. It combines aesthetic needs in fitness gear that boosts mood and enhances training.
Layering is a core quality of this trend. Moisture-wicking long sleeves, athletic vests, jackets, sweatshirts, and other layering pieces will help users structure their look and get a sharp silhouette. These have increased commercial appeal and are suitable for exercise, running, skiing, and all-day-long activities.
Retailers should also look into investing in harmonious colors, monochrome designs, and contrasting prints and patterns. These fits allow consumers to use their bodies to have fun while expressing themselves.
Consumers can also pair utilitarian pieces and classic accessories like cargo pants and utility vests with some color, striking the perfect balance between practical and attractive for a new spin.
Digital daydream
This futuristic ski direction draws inspiration from the rising popularity of winter sports in China. Digital daydream offers ski sets with fantastical and bold aesthetics, helping to create a strong presence in the metaverse.
Digital daydream comes with playful and fashion-focused silhouettes, which appeal to Gen Z and create collections that feel excellent for après and ski events.
An exaggerated cozy style combines digital sheen outerwear pieces with recycled insulation for high fill power. Also, butter-soft mid-layers and skin-like thermals will offer transitional appeal from the online & offline social lives to the ski slope.
Hyperreal colors like digital lavender and pink clay bring a joyful and surreal aesthetic to the digital daydream trend. Consumers can use this style for skiing and other winter-related sports.
Techno swamp
What happens when techno merges with the great outdoors? The birth of the techno swamp trend. This aesthetic is all about showcasing a forest disco aesthetic.
But that’s not all. Techno swamp blends organics with high-sheen, giving the swampy look a rebellious and playful fitness twist.
This trend hosts various staples, including second-skin layers, long-sleeve tops, and soft cutout bodycon tops. Fully embodying this trend requires opting for materials with antioxidant technologies and nourishing vitamins, like the renewable SeaCell fiber.
In addition, Techno swamp showcases prints inspired by nature, enhancing them with proportions and digital colors, like vibrant green mixed with grounding brown. This color story is ideal for dancing, yoga, training, and running.
Space Sahara
Space Sahara evolves from A/W 22/23’s tough terrain trend to offer climate-adaptable layers that help to maintain body temperature at comfortable levels.
The space-inspired utility trend mixes rugged durability with a feeling of energized focus to achieve a stylish, yet functional aesthetic. Plus, space Sahara items are easy to pack down and store for use on the go.
Materials under this techy trend include hard-wearing sustainable fabrics, like recycled nylon 6.6 and bio-based yarn. Space Sahara focuses on materials with enough durability to stand the test of time, even in harsh conditions.
In addition, space Sahara palettes strike a balance between pastels (like pink clay, dark oak, and pineapple) and powdery metallics. Consumers can also rock this trend for trailing, running, and all kinds of adventures.
Fantasy glam
Businesses can follow an energized digital direction by merging technology and fitness through the metaverse. Fantasy glam encompasses bold activewear that’s playful or alluring enough to make a statement.
Interestingly, fantasy glam takes inspiration from Tripp, which provides VR wellness sessions that help upgrade the consumer’s inner self. This trend also brings embellished details to life by adding them to active styles.
Fantasy glam pushes toward replaceable or removable trims at the end of an item’s lifespan, allowing consumers to recycle or enjoy some modularity.
Colors under this trend include neon details, pastel tones, and other hues with illuminated features. Retailers may also add a sultry edge by opting for hues like digital lavender, luminous pink, and pink clay. This trend is relevant for VR sports, training, dancing, and wellness activities.
Off-grid winter
Cyber sickness is becoming a serious problem for internet dwellers who bounce between screens frequently. For this reason, consumers will shift focus toward off-grid escapism and low-tech innovations.
Off-grid winter products provide a layering system, allowing consumers to wear and swap different items for fine-tuned outfits. What’s more? This trend tackles environmental issues by utilizing a regenerative mindset and replaceable weatherproofing elements.
Retailers can prioritize mountain safety by opting for seasonless neutrals mixed with brights. Off-grid winter items are more suitable for mountain sports.
Primal warmth
Humans have been craving warmth and sunlight since the beginning, and this trend caters to this natural desire. Spending time in natural daylight has certain health benefits, like increasing serotonin and boosting vitamin D production.
Consumers will see getting outdoors or adventures toward warmer climates as opportunities to escape from suppressing on-screen lifestyles. Hues like oranges and autumnal brights can incorporate a sense of warmth into basics and cozy layers.
Primal warmth also prioritizes using responsibly-sourced natural fibers. Plus, the trend offers textured and plush fleece made from biodegradable, recycled, or regular wool, ensuring consumers stay toasty during sunny winter days.
Retailers can opt for plant-based jerseys and other materials sourced from food waste and fruit to offer enhanced comfort. Primal warmth is relevant for outdoor activities, training, and yoga.
Soulful minimalism
Even the classics are not safe from fashion updates. Soulful minimalism mixes classic pieces with tactility while implementing crafted elements, responsible fibers, and manufacturing practices.
The trend is all about making styles durable through repairability and quality. Retailers can look beyond cotton for more regenerative and sustainable fabrics. Ideally, they should go for plant-based materials over petroleum-derived products.
Soul minimalism also adds character to plain styles by utilizing tactile surfaces. Quiet tones and off-whites, like chalk and pumice, also help enhance various classics. Retailers can add the warm highlights of apricot crush for even better results.
Yoga, athleisure, and outdoor activities are some practices compatible with the soulful minimalism trend.
Common grounds
2023 comes with many changes to the lounge and comfy lifestyle. Consumers are shifting towards enriching contacts with nature, working remotely, and living an evolved #vanlife, allowing outdoor workouts to gain more prominence.
However, this increasing interest in the great outdoors will also prioritize respecting and paying homage to the land and its existing communities. Hence, common grounds focuses on multifunctional layers with enough versatility to match changing environments.
Styling this trend involves layering climate-adaptive innerwear with insulated jackets and lightweight fleeces. Common grounds also utilize graphics and prints as ways to promote altruism and education to the people about the environment.
Homebound
Hiking is more popular than ever, and the updated activity will see consumers re-rooting or traveling through new communities and locations. Such movements require styles that offer a sense of home, regardless of the wearer’s location.
Consumers are changing priorities and swapping materialism for happiness, rest, and other positive vibes. Hence, businesses can explore designs that reflect this homebound desire.
Invest in versatile base layers that double as insulation and home wear. Overalls are also hot this season due to their practical mid or top layer. Also, capitalize on weatherproof outer layers to allow consumers to explore everything nature has to offer.
Hobbycore
Hobbies are going through drastic changes as younger generations are rapidly adopting ones associated with their predecessors. While this change keeps gaining momentum, it also receives fresh voices and perspectives.
Activities like birdwatching, fishing, metal detecting, and even mushroom foraging are undergoing youthful and social-media-ready changes. Hobbycore employs bright colors and bold graphics & prints to help make these styles distinct from their older counterparts.
Sellers can stick to recycled or biodegradable plush fleece with contrast-color panels for more appeal. They may also focus on lightweight packable items and low-impact weatherproofing outerwear.
Rounding up
Active forecast trends relate to an aspect of the changing society and how businesses and consumers can benefit from them. The grunge romance collection comprises versatile pieces that wearers can easily mix and match to transition from fall to winter.
Ground control features space-inspired outfits that combine texture, style, and utility, enhancing body features and the wearer’s performance.
Fluid careers comprise casual variations of the formal attires fit for the desk and the gym, while dopamine minimalism and art-lete trends’ fun & function pairs with colors and styles.
Businesses must leverage these active forecast trends to maximize profits and enjoy boosted sales in A/W 23/24.
