Sports + fashion, together forever

Photo: Getty Images

A new exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum examines the romance between sports and fashion and its resulting street chic offspring, the tracksuit. Featuring 60 outfits, drawings, photographs, and films that showcases design elements, advertising campaigns, and fashion collections, "Fashion V Sport" reveals the ways in which sportswear has sprinted from the gym to the runway.

"More and more we are seeing fashion brands getting involved in sports like the Olympics or Wimbledon or the U.S. Open," curator Ligaya Salazar told Reuters.

The show is divided into sections entitled "Dare," "Display," "Play," "Desire," and involves designs from high end names like Prada, Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood, and Yohji Yamamoto, who have created looks for companies including Adidas, Reebok, Nike, and Puma. It also investigates the role of sports celebrities, like hunky poster boys David Beckham and Roger Federer, in popularizing fashion trends off the field.

"Fashion and sport share a long history, but close collaboration only began about 10 years ago after designers noticed ordinary people wearing sports gear outside the gym in emulation of the stars of the sports and entertainment worlds," Salazar said.

And here we were willing to give all the credit to Richard Simmons.

The exhibition runs through January 4th, 2009.