via @chromat
While models famously share their pre-fashion week workout regimes all over Facebook and Instagram, New York activewear brand, Chromat, actually replaced its runway with a sweat session. The collection was both inspired by and in protest of the Olympics. While the games are widely considered the pinnacle of athletic achievement, recent scandals, like the treatment of South African runner Caster Semeny, have proven the global competition to be problematic.
“Why are women, intersex and non-binary athletes forced to undergo body modification and possible mutilation to compete as their true selves within an oppressive gender binary?” Chromat asked in an Instagram post last week. “For AW 2020, we have designed uniforms for the #Chromat2020 Team, reimagining sport as a unifying celebration of collaborative talent across the gender spectrum.”
The brand paid homage to the sports competition by featuring athletic cuts in coulourways that could easily be plucked from different flags, but the protest against the Olympics’ policies were loud and clear, especially of the International Association of Athletics Federations’ regulations requiring female athletes with high levels of testosterone to take medication to alter their hormones and the sex-testing. As always, the model line-up included a diverse cast in terms of size, ethnicity and gender expression.
This isn’t new territory for Chromat. Last season, the New York brand turned their focus towards “sample size”. Challenging the common rhetoric that says models have to be a certain (ie. tall and thin) shape in order for brands to be able to show off their designs, Chromat sent models of all sizes down the runway in t-shirts and dresses reading “sample size”.