Lycra: The legacy left by Olivia Newton-John with ‘Physical’ video

The New York Times

A funny thing happened when Kameron Lennox revisited the music video for “Physical” (1981), the huge pop hit by Olivia Newton-John, who died on Monday (8).

For most of the video, Newton-John dances frantically in a gym setting, working out in a white leotard and terrorizing out-of-shape men. In true 1980s style, the leotard is worn over magenta leggings and under a light blue shirt, fitted with a belt and accompanied by thick socks and a bandana.

Lennox, a Hollywood costume designer, was getting ready to work on “Physical,” an Apple TV+ comedy drama starring Rose Byrne, and noticed something he hadn’t noticed when he first watched the silly, sexy video for the song. , when I was a child.

The white leotard was “poorly fitting in the crotch area,” said Lennox, who couldn’t determine if the garment was actually a leotard or if it had been made from an oversized T-shirt. “The crotch kind of looked like a diaper. It resembled something homemade. Or actually, it looked like fashions that were about to happen.”

Thanks to the video, which coincided with the rise of MTV, “Physical” is remembered as something of an anthem of the aerobics era — despite lyrics that speak more of copulation than cardio. Newton-John’s costume also became a fashion symbol of the time — despite the leotard’s rudimentary confection, which “is definitely not a gym outfit,” said Lennox, whose work on the series ended up being inspired by lesser-known aerobics instructors. , such as Bess Motta.

In that sense, the outfit the singer wore in the “Physical” video is also an early example of “athleisure”, a term that was originally used to describe not workout clothes, but casual clothes reminiscent of gym clothes.

As Newton-John explained in a video posted to his YouTube channel in December, the video “really helped kick off all the aerobics and fitness craze back then. It was the birth of the ’80s headband and headband craze. I should have started a company to sell leggings and bandanas, or produced a series of aerobics videos. But Jane Fonda got there first.”

It’s true that no one popularized aerobics and the ballet-inspired aerobics aesthetic more than Fonda, who opened a fitness studio in 1979 and published the bestselling “Jane Fonda’s Workout Book” in 1981. But “Physical” arrived. close, and helped cement a trend – that of dance-inspired exercise – that already seemed destined to dominate the decade, not just because of the dance-centric pop culture phenomenon that dominated those years (“Fame” came out in 1980, “Flashdance” in 1983, “Footloose – Crazy Rhythm” in 1984), but because of the resurgence of a fabric invented in 1958: Lycra, the brand name for a textile product whose generic name is spandex (“spandex”).

Newton-John’s video “visually crystallized, in just a couple of minutes, what was happening in culture, industry and consumer habits,” said Sonnet Stanfill, senior curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum and editor of ” 80s Fashion: From Club to Catwalk”, a 2013 book about period fashion.

In the 1970s, the textile industry began using Lycra — formerly used as a rubber substitute in women’s girdles — to create entire exercise-themed collections. And so women who watched Jazzercise or Jane Fonda’s classes or videos were exposed to “a whole wardrobe they could buy to feel good when they were working out,” Stanfill said, mentioning tights and tights in a wide range of “colors of almost violent tones”. Running bras also emerged in that period, and nearly a decade had passed since the passage of the law known as “Title 9” encouraged greater participation by women in US sport. The choices seemed limitless.

“The last quarter of the 20th century in America was a time of celebrating the benefits of exercise, and creating a wardrobe that suited that,” said Stanfill. “Often changes in fashion, particularly for women, are linked to times when sport has brought lifestyle changes.”

In high fashion, stylist Azzedine Alaïa was also using stretch materials for her designs, creating very body-conscious fashion and giving women a new opportunity to flaunt their toned bodies, Stanfill added.

While the aerobics aesthetic of the 1980s generally seems dated, these days, certain elements of the period have briefly returned to fashion. In the 2000s, before the spectacular fall of the founder of American Apparel, the company had reintroduced sparkly tights and glittery leggings, with marketing leaning more toward irony and grunge-sexy style than the silly sexiness of the era. aerobics.

But the use of spandex never disappeared, and it was repurposed in the form of yoga pants and leggings that remain in fashion, and later in the trend towards using shapewear as clothing. “The lasting legacy is that stretchy fiber that allows the body to move and can greatly benefit the silhouette if you’re looking to show off your figure,” said Stanfill.

But as Lennox discovered when he was trying to track down 1980s tights for the “Physical” series, most Lycra from that period “has not stood the test of time.” Still, the playful spirit of Newton-John’s video continues to inspire clothing and culture (as the Apple TV+ series and a new “Physical” song Dua Lipa released in 2020 prove.)

When Outdoor Voices created its first studio collection in 2019, the pieces (accompanied by ballerina skirts and tops) were influenced by the tights and “leggings” look that Newton-John and Fonda pioneered, said Ty Haney, founder and former – executive president of the company.

But the inspiration went even deeper: Outdoor Voices helped popularize “athleisure” in the 2010s, promoting movement beyond the confines of traditional exercise, favoring “doing things” (their slogan) over exercise, and confusing the distinctions between exercise clothes and gardening clothes. Does a leotard have to be a performance costume or can it just be a costume from a crazy music video?

There was a “joyful perspective they brought to the idea of ​​moving the body,” Haney said of Newton-John and Fonda. “They freed fitness from performance.”