Laura Craik on Beyoncé's new activewear range, trophy dresses and hot celebrity couples

Our columnist takes on the latest trends
Ivy Park
Laura Craik14 April 2016

Sooner or later, exercise claims us all. However thin, lazy or nonchalant you are, one day you will wake up and realise that there is nothing else for it but to rise up and join the ranks of irritating, self-obsessed women in their Day-Glo trainers, psychedelic leggings and moisture-wick fleeces so the existential hum can deafen you no more.

Once, interviewing Jools Oliver, I enquired what her typical daytime look was. ‘This,’ she said, sticking out a black Lycra-clad leg. ‘I basically live in exercise gear.’ She’s not alone. It’s why Selfridges has just opened Body Studio, a vast 37,000 sq ft space chock-full of excellent kit. Despite the commonly held conception that women simply wear said kit to pose in (the parody video ‘Activewear’, featuring women emptying bins, smoking fags and drinking coffee in their workout gear has clocked up over 4 million watches on YouTube), I disagree. Most Londoners I know squeeze their exercise regimes into increasingly narrow time frames: the 6am spin class, the 9pm yoga class, the midday trip to the office gym, the half hour before school pick-up. They’re not wearing that shizzle for kicks. They just haven’t had time to change.

Once exercise claims you, it never loosens its grip. Somehow, you find time for it. I didn’t start running to lose weight, get fit or look smug on the school run in my Nikes. I started running because I had to. I wasn’t running to Planet Skinny: I was running from my thoughts. Running quells them, yet, as with most forms of exercise, there is rarely enough emphasis on how it makes you feel, and too much on how it makes you look.

Clever Beyoncé, then, whose new range of activewear, Ivy Park, is obviously designed to make you look Bey-level cool, but is being marketed to highlight the holistic benefits of working out. ‘I would look at the beauty around me — the sunshine through the trees. I would keep breathing,’ says Beyoncé in the promo video, glistening in photogenic sweat extracted from the tears of angels. Running is a fine way to see the beauty in everything. And if you don’t believe me, believe Beyoncé.

Gold rush

I have turned into the sort of saddo who signs up for email alerts to be informed when the item she wants to purchase is back in stock. It’s a stressful pursuit, especially if the item you want is from Zara. So obsessed have I become with buying its ‘golden pleated dress’ (bottom left, £29.99) that I don’t even know if I like it any more. I just want it, like a trophy. I only noticed the first email alert two hours after it had been sent — by which point the dress had sold out again. The second, I clocked 13 minutes after it arrived in my inbox… still too late. What sort of dress sells out in 13 minutes? This one. An early contender for dress of the season? For sure. But back off: the next delivery’s mine.

Pairing off

Billie Piper and Laurence Fox, Drew Barrymore and Will Kopelman, Tess Daly and… oh, she’s still with him. With each celebrity couple’s demise, the hopeless romantic’s heart breaks just a little further. So thank the gods of the seven kingdoms for Rose Leslie and Kit Harington (Rit? Kose? Nope — they’re so singular that they EVEN DEFY BEING MADE INTO AN ACRONYM), aka the coolest pair that ever lived. As love stories go, nothing beats the narrative of the on-screen couple whose love blossomed off-screen. Just nobody mention Bennifer.

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