Before Ty Haney created Outdoor Voices in 2013, a dress was something you wore to dinner. Unless it was short and stretchy, which meant you wore it to tennis. Workout clothes were mostly black, white, or gray, not sorbet sweet, nor were they totems of an aspirational life or style or, God forbid, lifestyle. They didn’t go to brunch.
With Outdoor Voices, Haney relaxed everything but the compression in her spandex pieces, gathering exercise clothes under a more easygoing name—recreation—and inviting everyone to join her in “doing things,” the company’s slogan. Where Nike was hard driving with gritted teeth and admonition (Just Do It, dammit), Outdoor Voices was smiling and chatting with friends as it walked the dog.
