In 1999, a man named by the name of Stewart Brand was stuck at a large desk in San Francisco trying to put his finger on how to best show the pace at which the world changes. The former merry prankster, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, and creator of one of the earliest online communities eventually came up with a simple drawing consisting of just 6 layers. On the bottom he put nature, the slowest, then culture, governance, infrastructure, commerce, and at the very top – fashion. Fashion, unlike all the other lines twisted and turned, went forward and back. It was wild, unpredictable.

The insight Brand’s pace layers provided wasn’t that trends in fashion or art are hard to track. What the sketch did was put all of these different parts of our life in context. Doing so illustrated his point that the world around us moves all together, but at different speeds. Given this context, it also highlighted the difficulty of trying to predict the beginning or end of any trend on the top end of those layers.

Is the trend dying, or is it being subsumed into the broader cultural palate? Is there even a difference?

Of course, that hasn’t dissuaded anyone. Almost as if by reflex, people will predict the death of a trend as soon as it begins to take shape. This tendency can at times feel less like an attempt to provide insight and more a race to have ‘called it’ first. The style of clothing that seems to have been on the receiving end of this type of prediction has been technical apparel, or ‘athleisure’.

Characterized by the use of synthetic fabrics cut into clothing with an athletic fit and stylish look, these are the clothes that you’d be just as happy to wear in the gym as at a cafe. Yet, despite literally years of eulogizing – there has yet to be a funeral. If anything, it seems like the techniques developed by these designers are becoming increasingly mainstream. So which is it? Is the trend dying, or is it being subsumed into the broader cultural palate? Is there even a difference? We got tired of reading half-baked predictions and armchair opinions, so we reached out to some of the biggest and most interesting players in the world of technical apparel to try and get their perspective on the fate of technical wear.