Love wearing it: The Upside by Jodhi Meares

When I travelled to Australia last month, one of the first things on my shopping list was an item - or two - from new active and yogawear collection The Upside (as yet unavailable in New Zealand bar online from Australia). I’d read about it in advance and long admired the style of its founder Jodhi Meares, who said of the collection “how you choose to look and feel should be a direct reflection on your choice and ethos in life. 
The Upside fuses sport and fashion with its mix of yoga gear, shorts, tank tops and camis, all designed to be worn from your gym class to casual dinner afterwards.” Can’t argue with that!

After 15 years on the mat in Australia and the US, in particular Hawaii, Jodhi saw the need for dynamic active wear that was not only functional but looked great in and out of the studio. The Upside was born out of a vision of “how we believe women and men will dress in the future as we value the need to move, stretch, run and be still as much as the need to eat, sleep, work and play”.

Reassembling the team from her previous label Tigerlily, Meares spent the last four years building her new brand and it has been an instant hit.

Her devotion to exercise means that Meares lives in clothes that work into her lifestyle. In Australia's Bazaar Magazine, she says "I was wearing a bit of Lululemon and Omgirl to my yoga classes at Equinox (New York), or if I was in Hawaii I'd resort to pulling on some great Louis Vuitton leggings, wearing them to yoga class them teaming them with Havaianas afterwards. I couldn't find anything I wanted to wear, so I'd put these looks together." Meares could see a gap in the market that many other active women would have already encountered. "Everything that was available was either too sportswear, mainstream or suburban," she observed. 

Now that exercise is an integral part of most women's busy lives, women like me are updating their sports wear seasonally, and in my case, takes up a large portion of my clothing budget. "We are doing more to nourish our souls and condition our bodies more than ever before and being here in New York at the moment I am really inspired by the amount of people who are seriously looking after their bodies," said Meares in an article for news.com.au. 

The collection has a contemporary eco-friendly style with a strong emphasis on health and spiritual pursuit, and the pieces I bought - which included a seriously great logo tank and crop pants in a beautiful hydrangea print - have worn incredibly well to boot. I love my sportswear with a side of sass and The Upside is all this and more, and I’m already scheming a trip back to Australia to grab me some more!

For more info visit their website here.