For us it is “jogging”, but for the language of fashion, “chandal” or to be more precise , the set of pants and sweatshirt made of cotton and/or polyester that jumped from the world of sports to everyday life; and from the club locker to our closet.
Or rather, everyone’s closet.It’s just that the jogging no longer distinguishes ages, sexes, labor segment or social classes: it is almost a heritage of humanity and since 2009 it has had its own universal day, January 21, so that the whole world remembers it and use it where you please.

In short, its adaptability is what made it a garment of dress so indispensable. So much so that, along with chinstraps and masks , it was the most popular item of clothing during the pandemic. When the coronavirus locked up to humanity, for most of the world’s population teleworking and jogging along with handbags, heels and makeup they took a long nap.
No one is disappointed by jogging: politicians on a walk Sunday, celebrities who try to go unnoticed, tourists who prefer to travel comfortable and housewives when they do the shopping.
Students have been designing their own models for decades as a mark of identity that indicates the shell they are about to emerge from. High-performance athletes have also chosen it for decades, both to avoid losing heat before entering the scene and afterwards, when giving explanations at press conferences.
From garlic to jogging
No one would suspect that such a garment democracy came into the world among the garlic vendors of the Les Halles market in Paris, the largest fruit and vegetable stall that the capital of France had, as early as 1135.

The immense estate of Les Halles only reached be a dozen pavilions (in 1935 there were already twelve) with iron columns supporting the ceilings and glass walls in the second half of the 19th century.
As it happens today, each vendor shouted at the top of his voice what he was offering and, at the beginning of the 20th century, the sellers of garlic , the marchand d’ail, shouted their own. Since the French like it so much, in a short time, they shortened the phrase: chand’ail.
And in everyone’s memory, the word “tracksuit” was the salesman who protected himself from the cold of the early hours of the morning with a rough coat knitted like a ribbed sweater. By metonymy (linguistic displacement) the garment ended up identifying the person.
In the year 1880, in the city of Amiens –exactly where Jules Verne lived at the time– the merchant Gamard began to manufacture his version of the Tracksuit, the same jersey garment, but in a finer, more expensive and attractive version for the rich of the Quartier St.-Leu, which today is full of shops and cafes, between gardens and narrow canals.
In a short time, Gamard’s Chandal reached the academic cloisters of this city with a Gothic cathedral and medieval culture. And it was on the torso of the smug students of La École de santé, which at that time was just a history laboratory natural and botanical training operating in the Hôtel-Dieu.


From this city in the north of France, the tracksuit reached the university environment, including across the English Channel, in the United Kingdom, and became a popular and ideal garment to identify each campus. Comfortable, flexible and warm, it was a matter of a few more years so that he landed in the world of sports.
Meanwhile, the French soldiers took the tracksuit to the long-suffering trenches of the First World War .
From the trench to Mussolini’s fascism
The history of the tracksuit found another faster highway towards the world of fashion: that of Italian futuristic art . It was at the hands of the Florentine Thayaht, a pseudonym (a palindrome, actually, because it is a mirror word) of the artist Ernesto Michahelles who, in 1919, landed in France to study painting at the Académie Ranson from Paris.
In the blink of an eye, her futuristic designs on fabric earned her a contract at Madelaine’s fashion house Vionnet. It was there, and with the collaboration of his brother RAM (Ruggero Alfredo Michahelles) that, in 1920, he designed a new garment, “Tuta” to reach everyone.
How it happened with tracksuit , the word “tuta” came from the deformation of the French “tout-de-même” (“all the same”). The tuta was a prêt -à-porter for every day, low cost and for workers. It was an overall, a single piece, square, with pockets and a central line of buttons running all the way down to the waist. Women could add a belt to highlight their silhouette, but the garment was essentially national and popular, the same for everyone, cheap and easy to make.
Everything was on track, and the publication of the pattern of the tuta in the newspaper “La Nazione”, confirmed the spread that Thayaht had dreamed.
Thayaht was truly a creator. The name tuta also pointed to the letter “T” that formed the torso, resting on the rest of the garment that looked like an “A”, due to the design of the legs.


Despite the desire of Thayaht that everyone used their tuta at any time of the day, the fascism and the circumstances confined his garment to the work fajina, especially among metalworkers , for whom a blue version later emerged (the one we know today), the tuta blú, or the blue tracksuit, whatever you prefer to call it.
Maybe he didn’t care too much, because Thayaht was a fascist. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the creator of futurism, connected him with Benito Mussolini, so that he himself hand over the portrait he had made of her. From then on, the Duce supported him in everything; He even asked him to design the fascist hat.
He was a forerunner in every way (he designed fabrics, haute couture jewelry, participated in exhibitions fashion, etc.) The simple and geometric design of the Tuta ended up being the pattern of the “T shirt”, the t-shirt, another great invention that something should recognize to the Florentine.
From tuta to jogging
Thayaht was convinced that the creation of new fabrics and designs would lead to a new world. For this reason, he took it very naturally that the famous French sports rooster company launched on the market, barely a year after the graphic publication of the patterns and designs of the Tuta, a new “ creation”: the pants and the tracksuit.
The new version of the tracksuit, which was launched on the market by the firm created by Émile Camuset in 1882, was nothing more than the Tuta jumpsuit already divided into two pieces, but with lighter fabrics , greater elegance, closure instead of buttons and, later, with elastic cuffs on the sleeves.
The guiding concept was identical: wide and comfortable garment for all occasions, including –in principle- for the sports practice of cycling, football and rugby. And then running was added.
In the 1980s, the urban tribes of break-dance and hip-hop added it not only to their music-sports practices but also Thayaht‘s dream finally came true: they adopted jogging as a leisure garment for the whole day.
Since 2009, the jogging or “ sweatpantsl”, has an International Day that pays homage to it.
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