Put Some Real Clothes On: Activewear is for the Gym

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Love, Frank has returned as a weekly style advice column tackling your hard-hitting fashion issues and addressing a different fashion glitch each week. Submit a query here.

Dear Frank,

My New Year's Resolution of hitting the gym actually worked! But I'm afraid that I'm taking it too far. Lately, all I've been wearing is workout clothes. I try to keep it cute; it's usually some sort of solid yoga pant, oversize top, and Nikes. I feel like this is totally acceptable because the sportswear trend is still going full-force, but I'm also a bit worried. Will I look back in ten years and realize this was just like wearing velour tracksuits everywhere in 2003?

Sincerely,
Sporty Spice

Dear Spice,

I may get some flak for this and maybe I'm a bit of a snob, but, no, this is not okay.

If you are a personal trainer, sure! If you work on the floor at Athleta, absolutely!

Otherwise—no. Put on some real pants. Try something with a button. Not everything you wear everyday should be knit.

Take a cue from trainers Bob and Jillian on the Biggest Loser. When they're training their losers or shilling water filters and high protein granola snacks, they are wearing their active finest. At the weigh-ins, however, Jillian is suddenly a refined dressed-up lady! And Bob is wearing nothing less than Saint Laurent Paris or Dior Homme.

In ten years you will see pictures of yourself at a birthday get together or a casual lunch. In them you will be wearing yoga pants and a huge tee shirt and neon yellow-soled running shoes—a half a step removed from Regina George's mom in Mean Girls.. And you will want to die (that said, you won't be any more or less mortified than your Normcore friend or that acquaintance who really loves Rick Owens).

So just go put on some real clothes, for the love of god.

As a final note—congratulations on making that new year's resolution happen. That makes one of us.

Got a style question for Frank? Leave it in the comments or email one in here. Then buckle your two-toned leather Moschino belts, folks, because it's going to be ? Something.
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