Staying on top of new styles in the decorated apparel industry is an important part of running your business. Your customers are on the lookout for stylish fashion that meets personal passions, and decorators are in the position to offer them that.

Of equal importance is knowing what’s happening in the industry from an economic perspective. This helps with future planning, goal setting, and financial decisions. For an inside look at all of these talking points, Apparelist spoke with Rachel Newman, vice president and general manager of Activewear at Hanesbrands while onsite at the ISS 2024 trade show. Newman offers her thoughts on what to expect for 2024, which trends you should incorporate into your offerings, and more.

Apparelist: What are your overall expectations for 2024, and how will this year differ from the previous few years?

Rachel Newman: There is caution going into this coming year. It’ll be interesting to see the apparel decorators’ and printers’ take versus the suppliers’ take on it. I think the first six months of this year everyone will probably be more cautious, then hopefully there’s that leveling out in the next six months.

The way we’re positioned at Hanes, we specifically look at innovation and that is what drives how we come into every single market each year, retail and the wholesale, decorating side. It’s a point of differentiation for us. For example, CiCLO is one of those things we’re leading in innovation. The thing I come back to on CiCLO is the mindset of doing better. There’s this saying by Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

With all of the new data around microplastics and the challenges they are creating, I now have a different view on the use of recycled poly content. The innovation we should all focus on is what should we do better, what is the next right thing to do. For us specifically, that is the mindset with that we take with all of brands, including Hanes and Champion.

A: What are the new style trends you’re seeing in apparel this year?

Newman: When it comes to color, the last few years were all about bright color palettes. This year is much more muted. We can hardly keep the natural colors, like parchment and sand, on the shelves. And cream! We can’t keep up with the demand for that color.

Garment-dye is still trending tremendously. Our ComfortWash line is built in a way that doesn’t color migrate, which used to be an issue for both decorators and end-users. While that innovation happened a while ago, we’re still excited to see that category going strong. As we developed into this year, those muted, tonal, soft colors lend themselves beautifully to garment-dye, so we’ve really focused on that going into this year.

For all of our brands, comfort is a key component. We’ve come to market with some flowy, very soft fabrics, especially in Alternative. We also make sure to harness the iconic nostalgia that’s currently popular, especially in Champion. Retail brands have continued to do well even in a market with declines in core styles. Champion is a lifestyle brand born from sport, so our sport line has done well as it’s designed to take you between work and play.

Collegiate is coming into its own again, and we have authenticity in that space. You can see both collegiate and athletic influence throughout our Champion line. As we look across the globe, we also take influence from what is happening in Europe and Australasia. There’s a lot of design influence that we pick up from those regions. Within retail, the pinnacle tier of partners have been excited to see the archive based work that we have done, which helps drive heat into our industry. We are seeing success with these partners, which is exciting. We have all this heritage and nostalgia, and then couple that with comfort, and that’s where we’re seeing growth still.

As for style development we are seeing growth in quarter-zips and polo-esque silhouettes. New in the polo style are knit, sweat pant-style fabrics. We also have the split bottom top for women, available in cream of course!

Sustainability is now table-steaks. It continues to be a consistent part of our development across all of our lines

A: Tell us about the “What Moves You” campaign.

[Taken from the HanesBrands website]: “The campaign spotlights six creators with purpose across various disciplines from The United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, LATAM and Australia — telling their stories through the eyes of local directors. … Each of the campaign’s featured Creators are individuals that have harnessed their creative gifts to achieve a long-term goal that aligns with their values, and is bigger than themselves to Champion their community and a better tomorrow.”

Credit: Cassie Green

Newman: It’s our Champion global campaign that launched in September of 2023. We’ve had a lot of eyes on it in a very short time. The campaign started with us transforming the way we think about Champion – moving it from a noun to a verb – “Champion What Moves You”.  At the ISS show this year, we partnered again with Steffi Lynn, and we asked her what moves her. She created a beautiful mural with images of what moves her. She’s an artist who likes sports and music and so many other things.

I love the campaign because there’s something that moves everyone. I also love it for this industry because even groups come together about what moves them. We’re excited about getting people to share their story about what moves them.

A: Overall, what’s your biggest expectation for 2024?

Newman: Stability! We’re still coming out of COVID, the craziness, the inflation, and seeing some caution this year, but I think we all just want stability. I feel like we’re heading in the right direction.