Natural Fiber Workout Gear Report
Your guide to Gaia-amenable activewear to sweat in (& chill in)
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Today’s Plane is all about a question we’ve gotten a lot recently from friends and readers alike. It boils down to this:
“I don’t want to exercise in plastic. Most workout gear out there is full of plastic, plus the clothes look wack. What are the coolest Spyplane-grade natural-fiber pieces I can exercise in, which also look sick enough that I could wear them and look chill in other contexts?”
These days, more and more of us are trying to eliminate as much plastic from our lives as possible. Part of it has to do with horrifying headlines about microplastics. Part of it reflects anthropocene-era anxieties about the effects we’ve had on the planet over the past ~century, with plastics as the perfect manifestation of those effects at their most ruinous. If you ask me, part of it probably has to do with a deeper desire to purify ourselves of the literal and metaphysical contaminants of modernity baby!!
When it comes to plastics in workout clothes, the issue is especially salient, because it’s clothes we’re prone to get hot in, sweat into, and wear right up against our skin.
The common wisdom for decades has been that if you wanna go crazy hard and smash all your PRs, nothing is gonna rival synthetics for performance capability. There’s definitely something to this: doing a century is gonna feel a ton better if you’re wearing Lycra bib shorts than if you’re wearing cotton sweatshorts. But the dominance of synthetics is, of course, a relatively recent development — and there’s lots of contexts where a natty-fibey option will get the job done just as well, if not better, than a synthetic.
Then there’s the sad truth that cool workout clothes of any kind are few and far in between, and women have it especially tough on this front. Tons of legacy brands still follow the “shrink it and pink it” playbook — as designer Sandy Liang put it when I interviewed her in 2021, “Why do I need to be ‘sexy’ when I’m hiking?” Newer DTC brands pump out charmless and gross alternatives. The upshot is that we’re drowning in weird bondage-strap sports bras and goofy hiking skorts. Add the specter of toxicity to the equation? And it’s tempting to go full Julianne Moore in Safe mode 😷.
But not to worry. Because I (Erin) have expended a wealth of Salutary Unbeatable Recon Energy (S.U.R.E.) finding non-wack natural-fiber exercise clothes —for the ladies and the fellas alike — in a very special Spyplane Natty Fibey Workout Gear Report.
We’re talking about a robust guide to the best under-the-radar performance-driven pieces made from natural materials by labels we respect, including:
Shorts every which way — skintight, baggy, short or long
Tees & tanks
Base layers & long sleeves
Leggings & capris
Underwear & sports bras
Sweats & fleeces
Jackets, vests & outerwear
Pieces you can look cool rocking beyond strictly Getting Active scenarios
As always, there are zero affiliate links in the mix, because we remain a 100% uncompromised reader-supported miracle and never use affiliates when we cover new clothes.
Let’s get to it —