If you’ve been to the gym recently or scrolled on gymtok, you might have noticed something. The head-to-toe co-ord sets are giving way to something a little more… eclectic. Mismatched leggings and sports bras, Nike tops with Adidas shorts, scrunchies that don’t match anything. The “grabbed whatever was clean” look is here and we don’t think it’s a coincidence.
Fashion has always been a quiet economic indicator. When money gets tight, people don’t stop caring about how they look, they just get more creative with what they already have and become more resourceful. And right now, the gym might be one of the most honest mirrors of where we are financially as a culture.
Cast your mind back to around 2016 when Gymshark was exploding, Lululemon was becoming a personality trait, and the matching set went from gym kit to cultural currency, something you wore to signal that you were the kind of person who had it together. Financially, aesthetically, physically.
That era isn’t entirely over, but it’s shifting. And to understand why, it helps to know about Veblen goods.
Image source: Pinterest
What are Veblen goods?
Thorstein Veblen was a 19th century economist who noticed something counterintuitive about certain products: the more expensive they were, the more people wanted them. Not because they were better, but because the price itself was the point. Buying them was a way of signalling status, wealth, and social position.
He called this “conspicuous consumption” – spending not for utility, but for visibility. To show others (and yourself) that you could afford to.
Veblen goods are everywhere once you know what to look for. Luxury handbags, premium cars, and aspirational gymwear quickly got added to that list. The Lululemon legging isn’t just a legging, it’s a signal that states “I have disposable income.”
What happens when the economy shifts
Here’s where it gets interesting. Veblen goods are uniquely sensitive to the state of the economy. When people feel financially secure, conspicuous consumption rises – we spend to signal status because we can. When financial anxiety creeps in, the energy changes. The £90 matching set starts to feel less like self-investment and more like showing off money you’re not sure you have.
And so we reach into the drawer and pull out the mismatched gym set. We stop performing and start acting more practical… whilst romantcising it of course and turning into a trend.
This is exactly what happened in the 90s. The power-dressing, logo-heavy aesthetic of the late 80s gave way to something more stripped back and more grunge. People were navigating a recession, negative equity, rising unemployment and the fashion reflected it almost in real time.
We’d argue history is repeating itself. Just this time, in the gym.
The lipstick effect in reverse
You might have heard of the lipstick effect, the theory that during economic downturns, small luxury sales actually increase because people trade down from big purchases but still want to feel good. Lipstick, a nice candle, a £4 matcha instead of a £40 dinner out.
What’s happening with gymwear feels like the inverse. Rather than trading down to a smaller luxury, people are opting out of the status purchase altogether and finding that the thing underneath it (actually going to the gym, moving their body, feeling good) was never dependent on the outfit in the first place. We’re seeing it as more of a recalibration than a compromise.
What this means for your money
The gymwear shift is a small thing but it points to something much bigger happening in how we think about spending.
A lot of what we buy during periods of economic confidence isn’t really about the item. It’s about the feeling of being someone who can afford it. When that confidence gets shaken by rising costs, by uncertainty, by the anxiety of watching your bills go up, the spending that was really about signalling starts to feel hollow.
It’s actually a really useful moment of clarity. If the cost of living squeeze has made you look harder at your outgoings, you’re not alone. If you’ve realised that some of what you were spending on was more about feeling financially okay than genuine enjoyment or value, that’s important information about how you feel about money.
The goal was never the matching set, it was feeling confident and in control. And it turns out you can have that in mismatched leggings that are already in your wardrobe.