Explained: Bathleisure, the new trend taking over Instagram

There’s a new trend taking Instagram by storm: Bathleisure. 

You may have seen images of women with bright accessories, full faces of makeup and terrycloth towels on their heads dominating your Instagram feed recently; and this is all thanks to a new trend called ‘Bathleisure’ – a combination of “bath” and  “athleisure” (itself a combination of “athletic” and “leisure” used to describe wearing sportswear as loungewear). 

While not the most practical look, it certainly has an interesting timeline behind it. As with most trends, its origins can be traced back to Rihanna:

  • Early November 2017: In a cover image photographed by Juergen Teller and styled by Anastasia Barbieri, Rihanna casually wears, around her head, an orange, printed towel from the Emilio Pucci spring 2018 collection. 
  • November 7, 2017: South Korean singer CL wears a Vaquera Spring 2018 bathrobe to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund awards.
  • November 12, 2017: Rita Ora goes to the MTV Europe Music Awards in a terrycloth robe and towel from Palomo Spain.
  • November 20, 2017: The Cut coined the term “Bath-leisure” to describe the new phenomenon. 
  • January 23, 2018: Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine wrote about the phenomenon and notes that anyone can pull off the trend.

A quick search of the hashtag #bathleisure on Instagram reveals hundreds of people trying the comfortable-yet-impractical trend in only the last week; so you can definitely expect to see more bathleisure to come.