Should We Have Seasonal Wardrobe Kits (à la Sporting Life)?
For Your Summer Edit…A Case For Copying The Sporting World
Throwing kits? We recently listened to fashion a podcast in which the host and guest were dissecting the tennis kits at the French Open—New Balance versus On, versus Adidas, what have you—and it struck us how ‘kits’ have become a major component of sports, and how we talk about them. Athletic kits, which exist across tennis, soccer, Formula 1 racing, baseball, rugby, golf, to name a few, used to just mean the collection of essentials and accessories player uses in order to compete. But given our collective obsession with athletes’ dressing habits in general (both on the court/course/field/track, and off), even niche instances like the intensely-scrutinized wardrobes for the film Challengers, and of course the upcoming Olympics during which teams will compete wearing slick new uniforms by some of their countries’ most talented designers (in one of the world’s greatest fashion capitals), kits have become practically synonymous with clothing and style.
We can thank Serena Williams. who as far back as 2014 (leopard tennis dresses at the US Open!) normalized this contemporary assimilation of fashion into sports commentary, especially when it came to individual players. With every tournament that compelled coverage and discussion around her on-court style in a way that didn’t diminish nor distract from her command as an athlete, the more we were able to see how fashion in general could be a legitimate, impactful way for a player to express another aspect of her or his identity.
Here’s a thought: Why not take a page from this summer’s sports-packed playbook and apply the concept of a player’s kit to our own seasonal edits? When it comes to building out a trim lineup of season-specific pieces, kit-thinking offers a streamlined (and fun—if anything for the novelty) approach to assessing your closet, or even your shopping list. Kind of like you’re creating a capsule collection, only not exclusive to single designer or brand. In other words, it’s your summer capsule—aka, your summer kit.
We’re not going to tell you what goes in your summer kit, although a “week in the life of you” is a good way to think about it. Granted, just like any kit—toolkit, toiletry kit, first aid kit—you’re pulling together a set of items needed for a specific purpose, and yet the application of kit-building here especially benefits from the sports metaphor because this is where your own unique personal style comes out to play— literally. In other words, your replenishment of ribbed cotton tank tops and other super-versatile, perennial basics don’t qualify. You need those as well, but it’s the key pieces that thrust your singular, seasonal style forward, distinguishing you from anyone else—ie, the pieces in Serena’s kit that only she could pull off—that make the cut. These are your headliners: the newly-acquired pieces for the season that you build upon. And when you think about it, you actually don’t need that many.
Here’s most of the starting lineup in our own. Let’s call it Summer Edit Kit: June.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdb2e7631-dd20-4614-b1ad-af9c7e8bbc15_3470x4626.heic)
Of course, shopping is fun, and we’ve already purchased a cute linen skort by Batsheva since taking this pic, but the kit mindset has definitely curbed some excessive tendencies, and helped us walk away from the weaker inessentials. We’re going for aces only over here.