Every week, photographer Sarah Blais explores original street style via the uniform, a concept that predates fashion and goes unnoticed from Monday to Friday (and sometimes on weekends, too). Uniforms can encourage sartorial creativity, just like rules and restrictions allow for good art. This week, Blais shot yoga instructors in various positions. Here are three we’d bend over for in a hot second.
Linda went from brand-developing for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to owning her own health-oasis, iam yoga; how do you say “180-degree flip” in Sanskrit? She only shops Lululemon and gets extra-athletic gear for long-distance bike rides, to Pickering and back.
Maggie teaches at the Yoga Sanctuary and talks about yoga mats–the colour, the feel–the way fashion students talk about favourite dresses. “It’s like a six-foot piece of sanctuary,” she says. “All you need is a little piece of material to create an experience for yourself.” Most of her clothes are for yoga, made by Lululemon and Titka, but for off-duty wear, she shops at Urban Outfitters and Lavish & Squalor.
Like Linda, David Good is a Lululemon Ambassador, but he’s hardly cultified. When he’s not teaching at the Octupus Garden, the YMCA, or Lululemon stores, the tattooed, meat-eating, and sometimes-drinking totally rad guy wears exclusively Naked & Famous jeans with designer tees and skull belts. “There’s a change in who practices yoga now,” Good says. “Tattoo artists, musicians, all kinds of people who aren’t totally ideological about it are finding yoga is great for what they do. They’ll go to the studio and grab wine afterwards.”
