Emily Oberg, a 32-year-old Calgary native, launched Sporty&Rich in 2014 as an Instagram page—when she was the former but definitely not the latter. At the time, she was living in New York and working as a reporter and on-camera personality for Complex, covering sneaker releases and Hollywood news, with a picture of Michael Jordan and a Phoebe Philo-era Celine campaign pinned above her desk. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Sporty&Rich Instagram became a combination of those two images: a place where sports and fashion collided.
Featuring scans of 90s supermodels, sprawling country-club lawns, women with single-digit body-fat percentages exercising, smoking cigarettes, and sipping green juices (“balance is important,” Oberg says), Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and J.F.K. Jr. in sweats, vintage cars, red-clay tennis courts, and Princess Diana in bike shorts and sweatshirts swiped from the Ivy League, Sporty&Rich emphasized a certain strain of nostalgic casual chic where physical wellness was the ultimate aspirational luxury. Turns out Oberg was way ahead of the curve. (See: longevity biohacking, “Pilates girl” culture, wellness luxury vacation packages, contemporary tech bros.) Suddenly, Sporty&Rich became a whole world, and more importantly, it was a hit.
