By Dmytro Spilka
If current trends are anything to go by, wellness is set to be the word on everyone’s lips in 2023, and rightly so. In these challenging times it can be difficult to practice mindfulness and to take a moment to care for yourself, but the growth of the wellness market is set to become a leading fashion trend in its own right over the coming months, and will influence our styles in many ways.
Today, we’re fast becoming obsessed with exploring new ways to improve our fitness, nutrition, sleep, mindfulness, appearance, and general health, and the rise of wellness-focused fashion is paving the way to turn these desires into the year’s most sought-after trends.
From celebrating body-positivity to smart clothes, this article covers five of the latest styles to pioneer the growth of wellness in fashion:
Celebrating Inclusive Athleisure
Athleisure has been a leading trend when it comes to fashion over the course of recent years. This has been something of a revelation for fashionistas who are eager to look great while maintaining a level of comfort.
Even better is that athleisure can help to promote a more healthy lifestyle, and can be worn for workouts, jogging, and other activities.
The future of athleisure appears to be moving in a more diverse direction for 2023, and smaller labels are actively seeking to cater to more niche markets while larger brands are attempting to complement these new active lifestyles of customers.
These notions have combined in delivering a body-positive and inclusive movement to providing the right apparel for wearers of all clothing sizes.
For brands seeking to open the doors to new markets, this has become an excellent opportunity to show their openness and inclusive nature.
The Next Generation of Smart Wearables
The great thing about smart wearables is that they’re ideal for monitoring our health and increasing our longevity.
While devices like the Apple Watch aren’t new to the fashion landscape, their power of wellness insights are ever-growing. For instance, the seventh generation of the Apple Watch introduced a blood oxygen sensor which is a groundbreaking advancement in terms of providing wearers with real-time health insights.
As the power of smart wearables continues to grow, they’ll become an essential accessory for fashionistas throughout the world. This will help to pave the way for more mix and match options for accessorizing the look.
This means that if you want your smart wearable device to match the latest line of Vera Wang glasses, you can gain more info on the range before finding the right watch strap or accent to color coordinate your look.
The Emergence of Smart Clothes
Thanks to advances in internet-of-things technology like body-mapping and various other key sensors, it’s now possible to utilize ‘smart’ clothes that can cater to a range of wellness benefits such as adapting to temperature changes and UV rays and take their levels of care to new levels.
In the future, active well clothing will be connected, intelligent, and capable of helping your body to heal, moisturize your body, and alter appearance to reflect your mood.
One case of smart clothing has seen MIT engineers develop a wirelessly-charged jacket that can automatically adjust temperature based on factors like the weather, the wearer’s body temperature, and how much they are moving. The clothing is controlled by a smartphone app or smart assistant and is just one of a number of examples of interconnected clothing helping to promote wellness.
In another example, clothing brand Become have utilized fabrics to aid menopausal women manage hot flashes and night sweats more effectively.
Comfortable Fashion is Cool
The beauty of modern fashion trends is that comfortable clothing and accessories are increasingly in vogue. This is certainly a welcome addition to the wellness landscape, as comfort-focused fashion like Crocs are continuing to win more favor among younger wearers.
For many years, Crocs have been a leading example of functional clothing that many consumers loved to hate. But in a wellness-focused landscape, we’re seeing more examples of Crocs becoming a style icon in their own right.
So resounding is the Crocs fashion revival that the hashtag #crocs have earned more than 7.5 billion views on TikTok. This isn’t an isolated case, either. Comfortable clothing is winning new fans as wellness takes center stage, and this can only be a good thing for our overall happiness levels.
Embracing Influencer Authenticity
Although not a fashion trend in itself, the industry’s steady transition towards more authentic influencer recommendations is likely to deliver an increase in consumer wellness.
While 10% to 15% of consumers in the US, Europe, and Japan have claimed that they’ve made a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendation, brands are becoming increasingly wary of high-follower or celebrity influencers–instead favoring their smaller and more relatable counterparts.
This is helping the industry to move away from the impossible beauty and fashion standards set by the world of celebrity, and more closely aligns consumers with more relatable content creators.
The greater relatability creates a far more healthy connection between influencer and audience, and can act as a more functional social proof than other more renowned accounts.
Although the world of fashion is still punctuated by unhealthy fads and less-sustainable trends, the rise of wellness within the industry is certainly growing at an impressive pace. If the end result can promote more positivity and comfort among followers of fashion, it can certainly play its part in driving change for the better.
Dmytro Spilka is a freelance writer with over 8 years of experience. He is the founder of Solvid, Pridicto and Coinprompter. His work has been published in PopSugar, Make Use Of, Huff Post, and more.