Running’s Big Fashion Opportunity

If you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to start running, the hardest part about getting started may be deciding what to wear.

Options for running apparel are so plentiful that a cottage industry of online directories, Instagram moodboards and sub-Reddits have sprung up to help would-be joggers and marathoners make sense of it all. Performance sneakers boasting carbon plates or lightweight materials now come with sneakerhead-coded collaborations and colourways that sell out online. Boutiques, including Distance in Paris and Renegade in Oakland, California target fashion-conscious runners. Even Brooks, a brand that’s traditionally been focused on performance, recently announced it would launch its first lifestyle sneaker in March with the streetwear and sneaker collaboration pioneer Jeff Staple.

Fashion’s incursion into the running world comes as the sport’s popularity is surging. A record number of people participated in marathons last year. Participation in running clubs shot up 59 percent globally in 2024, according to the fitness app Strava. The viral rise of these organisations, which exist for casual and elite runners alike, have helped turn running into a social activity where personal style is a bigger factor.

“Running is not just about participating in the race, but about how you live your life every day,” said Gabriele Casaccia, the creative director and founder of Mental Athletic, a new bi-annual print magazine centered on contemporary running culture that looks more akin to Dazed than Runner’s World.

The race is on among sportswear brands to win these new customers, who don’t yet have hundreds of miles logged in Brooks or Nike sneakers (though those brands are seeing strong demand for running shoes and gear too). There are performance-meets-fashion labels such as Satisfy, District Vision, and Soar, all founded in the early 2010s, as well as decades-old brands like Asics and Saucony, both of which made StockX’s list of top-five fastest growing sneaker brands in 2024.

As running-wear becomes a hyped fashion subcategory akin to streetwear, old and new running brands must distinguish themselves within a crowded marketplace by understanding new customers that sit at the intersection between lifestyle and the sport, engaging with a community-centered audience, while remaining authentic to their unique perspective and the customers that they serve.

“As the hype gets bigger it instantly creates new players,” said Christian Weigand, founder of the Substack and Instagram page Runners Highest. “Right now, running and running culture is in a place where everyone has their own spot if they want one.”

The New Running Customer

Cole Townsend, the founder of Running Supply (a Substack newsletter and online directory that curates and directs visitors to fashionable running products) believes that casualisation of running and the rise of lifestyle-influenced marketing within the space is leading running brands to target specific personas within a vast space—rather than vying to become a broadly focused sports brand such as Nike.

“You need to find a new sliver, a new persona, that is appealing to people,” said Townsend.

Satisfy, which turns 10 in 2025, carved a lane for itself by offering something different for trail runners through products with a distinct color palette and a sense of individuality typically not seen in the space.

“Our brand in some circles has become synonymous with a certain approach to running, trail running especially, and this is what part of the market expects,” said Satisfy chief executive Antoine Auvinet, who believes that even though the running-wear space is becoming saturated, the trail running sector is still ripe for innovation.

Bandit Running, have found their own niche by focusing and creating products for New York City’s ever-growing run club community. It sells versatile clothing that can be worn during both sport and social outings.

“It’s knowing that the runner can wear something in a running situation, but also own a race crop that they love styling with baggy denim to wear out on a Saturday afternoon, ” said Bandit Running co-founder and chief design officer Ardith Singh.

Distinguishing between “performance” customers who want products that produce faster times and comfort, and “lifestyle” customers who are more interested in the overall look, is an increasingly antiquated approach.

“Showing the same kind of running shot like we’ve always done isn’t going to be as interesting now,” said Saucony marketing director Jordan Yob. “There needs to be a community lever to it, something artistic and creative, to hit on their other interests too.”

Running With Community

A scroll through Saucony’s main Instagram page illustrates Yob’s point. Its feed includes a diverse range of posts that not only spotlight the elite runners Saucony sponsors but also local run clubs, lifestyle collaboration partners such as Jae Tips, and running influencers. One post is a gallery that shows how professional Saucony athlete Vanessa Fraser styles both Saucony performance running sneakers and a lifestyle silhouette.

The explosive rise of run clubs has made community engagement a key area of focus for brands such as Saucony and younger labels like Bandit Running. Granted running is generally considered a solo sport, its increasing interconnectedness today has encouraged running brands to move with its customers.

Bandit Running CEO Nick West credits the brand’s community for informing nearly every facet of its business. Its products are created through a “community-centered design process” that comes from conversations with runners at pop-ups, store-floor chats at their New York brick-and-mortar, Instagram messages, surveys and more. West adds that Bandit Running moved to open its second flagship store in Manhattan’s West Village in 2024 to create a hub for the vast amount of run clubs nearby—the store even opens at 7 a.m. to accommodate early morning runners.

“You have to get out into the running community to understand what the needs are, where the gaps are,” West said. “Then it’s bringing your own sensibilities and bringing the things that excite you in order to tell really authentic stories through your own perspective.”

Authenticity, Not Merch

Even though big and small running brands are paying attention to a customer that increasingly values lifestyle offerings, runners are still looking for gear that will perform and help them hit their goals, whether that’s hitting a Boston marathon qualifying time or finishing their first five-mile run.

Contemporary running tastemakers such as Weigand and Townsend say they can quickly sniff out which brands are authentically invested in running and which ones are hopping on the running-wear trend for a quick cash play.

“We’re seeing a lot of Instagram brands pop up, and they’re not making particularly technical apparel but just trying to make cool-looking [running] stuff. Those brands won’t last very long,” said Townsend. Weigand agrees, pointing out that emerging running brands feel more credible when they can also release fashionable products that “solves problems” for runners and not just T-shirts.

Designing products for consumers like Weigand is key for Singh at Bandit Running, who notes how the size and placement of pockets on apparel such as race crops is informed by authentic customer experiences — rather than fashion trends.

“If you were to think about Bandit on a spectrum from fashion to function, it’s definitely much more on the function side in terms of how we focus our design process,” said West.

That authenticity also extends to the unique perspective running brands offer and their commitment to it. Yob says when Saucony collaborated with Minted New York, a hybrid menswear-running label, they let the brand re-work a Endorphin Speed 4 performance running sneaker because the brand’s co-founder is a running influencer who actually trains in them. Townsend of Running Supply notes that even though older running-wear labels such as Soar, Tracksmith, and Satisfy have broadened their audiences since they were founded, he believes they’ve committed to their original vision.

“Ultimately, people look at Satisfy as a brand that is telling a consistent story and that does incorporate different types of products and uses,” said Satisfy’s CEO Auvinet. “Satisfy in its DNA, its creative expression, and functionality, and not bits and pieces that are cobbled together in a way that feels inconsistent.”

As running continues to fuel everything from hyped upcoming lifestyle sneaker drops from brands such as Asics and run club activations during Paris Fashion Week, true participants within contemporary running culture will also be searching for authentic partners and collaborators.

“Nowadays a lot of brands want to take a chance on this phenomenon…We’re not interested in working with any brand that just wants to organize something related to running,” said Mental Athletic’s Casaccia “Running is an experience for us and it’s our way of life.”