Rising From The Ashes: Velour Tracksuits

Ring out the bells, velour tracksuits are set to have a revival. Yes, the track is back, and it's plusher than ever. Let's, if you can bear to, rewind to the year 2002. You're busily applying your Juicy Tube lip gloss, whilst listening to Britney on your walkman and adjusting your obscenely priced Diesel jeans with embroidery on the bum. Then you see Amy, from next door, and she's wearing a Juicy Couture tracksuit in lemon yellow, and you quite literally cannot believe it. But then you graduated from puberty, mocked the tracksuit you begged your parents for Christmas and swore the garment from the deepest, darkest depths of your wardrobe would never, ever, return. Well, time to eat some humble pie. "Hell fire!" you cry. Firstly, there's nothing to fear here, and secondly just suck it up and get on board. We all know that a little bit of bad taste = good taste. Right? It's time to re-wrap your head around Paris Hilton's noughties-uniform and accept that people change, and this time round it'll be good to you. We promise. How do we know this? Well, firstly Rihanna wore a vintage Sean John one in March. We could stop there but we won't.

Secondly, Juicy Couture released images from its fresh new campaign this month to celebrate their 21st birthday and, guess what, their tracksuit's been done-over for 2016 and it look uh-mazing; muted colours, less branding (a little 'J' shaped zip instead) and a sleeker silhouette. Starring NYC downtown hot-things Atlanta De Cadenet and Cipriana Quann amongst twenty-one 'influencers' and using the hashtag #THETRACKISBACK, they're making pretty solid headway into helping us re-imagine the brand as the chicest streetwear on offer, for now. Even those among us who've vowed to wear nothing that ever made a cameo on The Simple Life, will be tempted. Thirdly, in the same very month, Juicy Couture was one of the eighteen brands to collaborate with zeitgeist taste-setter design house, Vetements, for its SS17 couture show in Paris, where the tracksuit made its blaze-of-glory high-fashion return. Yes, we said couture honey. Extra long slinkier-than-a-slinky tracksuits swept the catwalks and pooled nicely into the hoodies of mod-style parkas. They came as hooded maxi-dresses in black, as bus-red gloved jumpsuits and in pansy-pinks in boiler suit silhouettes. Yummy.

It's not just Juicy that's in on the soft-stuff. There are other places cottoning on to the maxim that "velour is Queen" (ok, we made that up, but, you know) like stalwart British sportswear brand Fila and ASOS stocked, Criminal Damage.

The key to wearing one now, is to take one piece, say the hoodie, and pop it under your trusty MA1 jacket, or fling it over a slip dress. Or, take the bottoms and wear with a slogan-tee and Adidas gazelles to up the ante. Just avoid Emma Watson in The Bling Ring bootcut styles and try and dodge the diamanté, unless that is you're going whole hog, in which case, we salute you. Sometimes more is velour.