Twentieth Century Women's Sportswear

The magnitude of the shift toward women's sportswear can be seen in Figure 1. In women's apparel there was a dramatic transition in the direction of more casual clothing in the mid-to-late 1960s. While these illustrations are episodic and selective, they do indicate the transition toward greater demand for product variety continuing throughout the late nineteenth century (Pashigian, 1988). This evidently projected as a more unrestricted form of clothing unbound from the societal and physical restrictions of the past, which addressed every women not just the elite, although the key market for much sportswear was white middle-class women including college girls, working women and housewives (Arnold, 2008). Dress was cultural shorthand for class

According to (Bruun and Langkjær, 2016) it was the styling and aesthetics that was the central focus. Up to the beginning of the twentieth century sportswear looked almost identical to work clothes or everyday apparel. This changed, however, in the late decades of the twentieth century, when sportswear design detached itself from general fashion design due to its practical function and a tendency towards a uniform look clearly distinguished one sport from another (Bruun and Langkjær, 2016). Aesthetics gradually entered into the picture with colours and patterns used to characterize players and teams seizing the attention of the spectators. By the use of clothing and other products, athletes began to create an identity within their sport role that would aid themselves and others in viewing them as athletes (Donnelly & Young, 1988). It is important to recognize how clothing was a symbolic possession in which aided the audiences’ acceptance of an individual’s status in a certain sport. Sportswear became easily identified with athletes perceived as more professional by wearing a team uniform rather than casual street clothing signifying the importance of the aesthetic influence early in the 1970’s (Harris et al., 1974). The growing relation between fashion and sport has spanned the entire post-war era. Challenges consisted in choice of colour, cut and fabric as well as

In addition (Morganosky, 1984) elaborates on this stating that consumers are willing to pay higher prices for apparel with a high aesthetic value regardless of the low functional value. Likewise (Frederick & Ryan, 1993) emphasized one of the primary reasons for sports consumption is to enjoy the aesthetic values of sports showing a significant similarity of social expression. (Öndoğan et al., 2016) study on sportswear buying behaviour of university students corresponds with the trend of wearing sportswear in daily life besides sports however results found fashion was the least affective factor for university students when purchasing sportswear and fitting and comfort factors taking first place. In comparison (Dickson & Pollack, 2000) disagree with this statement that female consumers regard aesthetic aspects such as style and brand characteristics to be more essential than the functional aspects such as comfort and other physical performance-enhancing features. Recognising that the aesthetic benefits reflect female consumers’ desire for attractiveness and connect with product-related attributes such as design elements, colour and body/garment relationships. Similarly (Eckma et al., 1990) reports on the evaluation of