While people wore less clothes and became more fit during the pandemic, the comfy bra had already taken over. With women working at home, comfortable bras are chipping away at the hegemony of underwire, which was once a neglected piece of gym gear.
According to figures from the Sports Bra Association, sports bra sales in Britain increased by a third in the last year to 7.1m as women swapped underwire cups for stretchy elastic. Approximately 10% of total bra sales were accounted for by sports bras, a quarter increase over last year, retailers Kantar said.
Consumers are taking notice of this bra revolution. According to statistics this week, sports and crop top-style bras have been added to the 700 products used by statisticians to calculate inflation rates. According to the annual shake-up report from the Office for National Statistics, men were also being freed from their shackles as the traditional suit - present in the basket since 1947 - was thrown out.
According to the ONS, the pandemic helped Britons become more aware of fitness, and many people exercised at home during a lockdown period as a result. According to the report, the increase in sportswear expenditure was associated with an increase in sportswear expenditure.
While analysts report that women spend more time watching Netflix than exercising, lifestyle changes caused by pandemic lockdowns helped accelerate the "at leisure" trend.
Athleisure-related products are becoming increasingly popular, according to Rebecca Watterson, a consumer insight director at Kantar. People are buying sports bras despite the fact that the [bra] market declined during the pandemic and is now flat.
In lockdown, people showed a big increase in taking part in sports, but the reason for purchasing sports bras is that it's a daytime item - so it's more for comfort."
As Athleisure became mainstream, Soozie Jenkinson, head of lingerie design at Marks & Spencer, said the long-term transition from formal to casual dressing was influencing the style of underwear her customers bought before the pandemic.
With an underwire bra in hand, a woman extends her hand. Sales of underwired bras have dwindled since lockdown. The arrival of Covid-19 and the new way of working caused another shift. Women's approach to clothing and bras changed as well as their approach to bras. Comfort became the "number one factor" and there was a shift towards selling non-wired bras, crop tops, and bralettes .
Kantar says women stopped buying bras during the pandemic, while others wore their old ones or toss them altogether, causing reports of the lingerie liberation of lockdown. In the year to 9 February 2020, women bought 75.7m bras, spending nearly £780m, but stores sold 13.1m fewer bras in the first year of the pandemic, wiping off nearly £140 million in sales, Kantar said.
Athleisure is causing the options for bras to become more blurred than they have ever been, Jenkinson says, adding that a "sporty look" is popular in everyday bras as well. "Sports bras have become a very generic term because of the fashion trends that have been going on these days." New hi-tech fabrics, including M&S's Flex fit with its stretch technology, are also affecting the market, as retailers are able to design more seamless and seamless garments, she said.
Shapewear brand Skims has introduced new products with a promising new aesthetic, like the softest, stretches butter fabric" bralette. The firm's sales are booming and the firm was just valued at over £2 billion at a recent fundraising event.
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