Stab Magazine | Stab Recommends: Six Tracksuits For Gainfully Employed Adults

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Stab Recommends: Six Tracksuits For Gainfully Employed Adults

Where style and comfort collide.

style // May 9, 2020
Words by Stab
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Run DMC, Bob Marley playing soccer in Battersea Park, Chas Tenenbaum and sons: tracksuits have always been awesome, if you can pull them off.

Unsurprisingly, a time that’s forced the majority of the world indoors has led to a the humble tracksuit returning to the forefront of the fashion pantheon, and we’re not immune to anything soft and matching. Purely by coincidence I read an interview Dazed did with Palace founder Lev Tanju recently and he said a number of interesting things in regards to the t-suit, most notably this: “Most companies are run by guys in suits who are trying to make money, whereas Palace is run by guys in tracksuits who are trying to make money.” Something to ponder before ushering in a new, comfortable, dawn.

Welcome Rivers

Welcome Rivers (the free-flowing creative output of Warren Smith and Grady Archbald that you’ll be hearing far more about when the world re-opens) is as fashion-forward as surf brands get and we love them for it. Try their boxy tracksuit in jet black, as covert as it gets for checking the surf or ducking in and out of the shops. 

Come over to the dark side. 

Stussy 

Stussy has ventured far from its roots in the inimitable Shawn Stussy’s garage, but like Australians with every notable New Zealander since Cooky stumbled over there, we still claim them as our own when they do something good. Like making timeless grey sweat combos. 

Not your regular grey sweats. 

Palace

Always a useful touchpoint (be that sartorially, or as a shining example of how authenticity knows no substitute in textiles), the tracksuit has been an intrinsic part of the geezer puzzle that makes Palace what it is. And incase you were wandering what that was, then it’s a skate/streetwear crossover with the mainstream appeal any modern surf brand can only dream of.

Straight to the source.

Saturdays

You can hide behind black, navy and grey, but there’s no missing a man walking the beat in a, mmm latte-beige? tracksuit. And that’s what’s awesome about the above offering from Saturdays. Will you meet the love of your life or get punched in the face? Only one way to find out.

Fortunes favouring boldness etc.

 

New Amsterdam Surf Association

Our hip Dutch brethren pay are as wise to the European streetwear canon as any of the labels in our world, so it’s unsurprising that their tracksuit game is strong. The above has been dubbed the ‘couch suit’ in the time of COVID, and in contrast to the others, it’s made entirely of micro polar fleece, which in layman’s term means soft, textured and warm.

Join the association.  

Birdwell Beach Britches 

Shiny, seventies and just perfect in every way. Birdwell’s entry to the tracksuit compilation is the closed thing we can imagine to a ‘surf’ tracksuit. You could easily picture Bertlemann rocking one, fro out aviators on, in the Islands back in the day, and that’s a look that’s well-worth replicating, pending your afro-sprouting capabilities.

A timeless shell.

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