BUDGET CANNABIS FOR ACTIVE-LIFESTYLE ADULT BUYERS

The budget-cannabis decision becomes more visible to active-lifestyle adults when small purchases add up across a busy training season. Eighth-tier buying runs 35 to 60 dollars per eighth in 2026 dollars. Value-tier ounce options cut the per-gram cost by 40 to 60 percent. The shift makes sense for adults in legal jurisdictions on a steady use cadence.

PHOTO CREDIT | Pexels/Terrance Barksdale

The same disciplined evaluation that informs other adult-recovery categories translates to the cannabis-value choice. Canadian adult buyers searching for cheap weed options online often start with the value-tier strain catalog before stepping up to higher-priced craft producers. The right dispensary reads the buyer's preferences first and matches products afterward. The decision rewards a few minutes of structured homework before the first order.

Why Has the Budget Cannabis Tier Grown for Active-Lifestyle Adults?

A budget cannabis tier is the price-and-format option where the buyer purchases value-priced flower or concentrates in larger quantities. The tier locks in a per-gram discount. Three structural shifts have moved it into the mainstream adult catalog. The first is the consumer-budget discipline. Adult buyers across legal markets in Canada and the US increasingly compare per-gram pricing across catalog tiers.

The second is the producer-side maturation. Licensed producers now offer value-tier pricing across a wide strain range. Five years ago the budget options were limited to commodity strains.

The third is the storage-knowledge spread. Adult buyers know how to keep flower in good condition for 4 to 6 months. The NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse cannabis page and the CDC cannabis overview outline the responsible-use framework adult buyers in legal markets follow.

What Should Active-Lifestyle Adults Verify Before a Budget Cannabis Order?

Six checks belong on every adult value-tier buying decision in legal markets.

Check	Why It Matters	What to Confirm
Lab-test certificates	Potency and purity verified	Certificate of Analysis available
Strain genetics	Effect varies meaningfully	Verified parent strains documented
Cure quality	Affects shelf life	Moisture content 58 to 62 percent
Producer transparency	Cultivation method matters	Licensed producer disclosure
Format options	Flexibility matters	Quarter, half-ounce, ounce availability
Privacy and shipping	Discreet adult delivery	Plain packaging, signature option

PHOTO CREDIT | Pexels/Ron Lach

A dispensary that produces clear answers across these six points signals a vendor worth working with. A dispensary that deflects on any of them signals a shop that may not match the adult buyer's needs. Asking these questions early saves real money over a year of regular value-tier purchases.

Which Buying Patterns Reward Active-Lifestyle Cannabis Buyers?

A steady-state buyer is one who uses cannabis on a predictable cadence and has a settled strain preference. Three patterns reward the budget tier more than the others. The first is the predictable-cadence adult who uses cannabis 3 to 5 times per week and finishes an ounce in roughly 6 to 10 weeks.

The second is the household with two or more adults sharing a strain preference. Doubled consumption shortens the bulk turnover meaningfully. The third is the connoisseur who has identified a specific strain and wants the per-gram discount on a known good batch. The same disciplined recovery thinking visible in a chef-feature lifestyle profile applies to the buying process for adult cannabis purchasers in legal markets.

The buyer who matches purchase size to actual consumption produces better outcomes than the buyer who over-buys.

What Common Mistakes Surface When Active-Lifestyle Adults Buy Budget Cannabis?

Several patterns recur. The first is over-buying for aspiration rather than actual consumption. An adult who finishes an eighth in 4 weeks does not need an ounce sitting on the shelf for 16 weeks.

The second is buying the cheapest unit without evaluating cure quality. Poorly cured value-tier flower goes harsh within 30 to 60 days. The per-gram discount disappears.

The third is ignoring the storage requirements. The same disciplined recovery filter visible in an athlete's half-pipe journey profile applies to cannabis: glass jars, humidity packs at 60 to 65 percent, and storage away from direct light.

The fourth is treating the purchase as a one-shot rather than building a small comparison rotation. The fifth is overlooking the source-jurisdiction rules around cross-border shipping. The sixth is buying without checking the per-gram math against higher-tier options.

What Is the Bottom Line for Active-Lifestyle Adult Buyers?

The budget-cannabis decision rewards the homework discipline an active-lifestyle adult already applies to other recovery and budget categories. The window allows for a few minutes of catalog comparison rather than an impulse purchase. The right dispensary reads the buyer's actual consumption pattern and explains the trade-offs in plain language.

Adult buyers come in different profiles. Casual evening users, weekend-only buyers, and steady-state daily users all benefit from the same criteria. The first bulk order should answer specific questions about lab-test transparency. Buyers who run real comparisons land at better products.

A short catalog review and a small first order turn the decision into a low-risk one for any new buyer. An honest assessment over the next 6 to 10 weeks completes the picture. The careful approach pays back across the entire year of adult-purchase activity in jurisdictions where cannabis is legal.

Most buyers settle into a stable preference within 60 to 90 days. The result is a clean rotation of two or three preferred value-tier strains across the year. Most adult buyers find the small homework investment worth the long-term steady-state outcome. The careful approach builds a reliable adult-use rhythm. The rhythm carries across the entire calendar year of regular budget cannabis purchasing and storage activity in adult-legal markets where the practice is allowed by current local cannabis law.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much Money Does Buying Budget Cannabis Save?

For most Canadian adult buyers, an ounce-tier value purchase saves 40 to 60 percent per gram compared to eighth-tier buying. The math depends on the specific producer, strain, and dispensary. A regular adult buyer using one ounce per 6 to 10 weeks saves several hundred dollars per year by stepping up to the value tier.

How Do I Read a Cannabis Certificate of Analysis?

Look for THC and CBD percentages, terpene profile, and pesticide and heavy-metal results. Certificates from accredited labs (ISO 17025) carry meaningfully more weight than uncertified ones. The certificate should match the specific batch on the packaging.

Is Cannabis Legal Where I Live?

Cannabis is legal for adults 19+ across all of Canada, with provincial variation in retail rules. In the US, recreational cannabis is legal in 24 states as of 2026. Cannabis remains illegal recreationally across the UK and most of Europe. Confirm the local rules before any purchase or use.

How Long Does an Ounce of Properly Stored Flower Last?

Stored in glass jars at 60 to 65 percent relative humidity, an ounce of well-cured flower keeps full quality for 4 to 6 months. Keep it away from light and heat. The disciplined storage routine pays back across the bulk-purchase cycle. Most adult buyers settle into a quarterly bulk-buying cadence with a small rotation of two or three preferred value-tier strains across the calendar year of regular adult cannabis activity.

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NEPAL DIGITAL LEISURE 2026: MOBILE ACCESS, PLATFORMS, AND DATA

Neither a single breakout app nor a single fashionable feature will drive Nepal’s digital leisure market in 2026. It runs on the phone, the data pack, and the habit of moving quickly between clips, chats, scores, streams, and payments without treating them as separate tasks. DataReportal’s 2026 Nepal profile put the country at 16.6 million internet users, 14.8 million social media user identities, and 32.4 million mobile connections at the end of 2025, while 77.0 percent of the population still lived in rural areas. That mix explains the shape of the market better than any slogan does: people stay with services that reopen quickly, survive signal drops, and remember where the session was left off.

The handset set the tempo

The first rule is still connectivity. On 9 February 2026, the World Bank approved a $50 million Nepal Digital Transformation Project focused on inclusive digital services, private investment in data infrastructure, and trust layers such as electronic signatures, cybersecurity, and data governance. Phones first. A platform can look polished on a product deck, but if it struggles on a bus ride, burns through data, or forces a fresh login after a weak connection, it loses ground to something simpler and quicker.

Payments moved into the same rhythm

The payment layer now sits inside the same routine as entertainment and messaging. Nepal Rastra Bank’s Falgun 2082 indicators, released in April 2026, showed 29,463,539 mobile banking users, 27,724,749 wallet users, and 49,027,228 QR transactions in a month worth NPR 125,915 million; mobile banking handled 62,540,294 transactions worth NPR 540,763 million. One small observation is hard to miss in those numbers: QR has become the go-to everyday action, while mobile banking still handles the heavier transfers. That split tells the story well, because digital leisure in Nepal is no longer built on a single app but on several tools handling different moments of the same day.

Match night became a second-screen habit

Sport remains one of the clearest ways to watch that behavior happen in real time. The Premier League app now releases lineups 75 minutes before kick-off and runs Matchday Live for every fixture, meaning the conversation starts before the whistle rather than after the first chance. In that same routine, a betting app is not separate from the match anymore; it sits beside the lineup alert, the score bug, and the clip of Declan Rice bending in the first free-kick in Arsenal’s 3-0 win over Real Madrid at the Emirates on 8 April 2025. Another small observation keeps returning on big nights: the first real spike in activity often comes when the XI drops, because fans are already weighing shape, absences, corners, cards, and live prices before the game has settled.

The feed learned what the user wants next

Recommendation systems changed the texture of leisure by reducing the gap between one piece of content and the next. YouTube says the Shorts feed is personalized to reflect what it thinks a viewer wants to see next, and Meta says the Facebook Feed uses machine-learning systems to rank content based on what each user is most likely to find relevant and valuable. TikTok LIVE adds another layer by giving creators and moderators direct control over real-time comments, filters, and viewer management. One small observation follows from that: digital leisure in Nepal increasingly feels less scheduled and more opportunistic, because the next clip, comment thread, or live reaction is already waiting for the current one to end.

One session, several surfaces

Cross-platform continuity is now part of the user experience, not a nice extra. Netflix still treats offline viewing as core mobile behavior, with Downloads for You automatically placing recommended titles on a phone or tablet, which suits a market where signal quality and travel patterns still shape how long a session can last. That same design logic shows up in melbet in its cross-platform setup across iOS, Android, web, and mobile web, built for users who do not want to lose the live state of a match while switching screens. The attraction is not mysterious: when a service keeps the same event, the same stats, and the same path open across devices, the user stays in rhythm instead of starting over.

Access still decides the winner

The sharpest reminder came when access disappeared. Reuters reported on 4 September 2025 that Nepal ordered telecom operators to block several unregistered social media platforms, and further reporting on 9 September showed the ban being lifted after deadly protests, which exposed how tightly digital communication, entertainment, and everyday routine had fused. Friction loses. People rarely describe this as infrastructure when everything works, but the moment a feed stalls, a payment fails, or a platform vanishes, the whole routine becomes visible at once.

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WHAT EXPERIENCES BETTORS LOOK FOR WHEN CHOOSING THE BEST CRYPTO CASINOS

Picking a crypto casino takes about thirty seconds. Picking one worth trusting takes a lot longer. Crypto gambling today attracts serious operators and opportunistic ones in equal measure. Experienced bettors have learned to tell the difference, usually through a mix of research and hard-won lessons. Here is what their evaluation process actually looks like.

Licensing and Legal Standing

No experienced bettor skips this check, ever. A valid license from a credible authority, such as the Curacao Gaming Authority, Malta Gaming Authority, or a comparable regulatory body, confirms that the platform operates within a defined set of rules and can be held accountable for breaking them. Hence, the best crypto casinos almost always have one.

Genuinely Fair Technology

This trust mechanism is specific to crypto gambling, and serious players treat it as a baseline requirement rather than a bonus feature. Provably fair systems rely on cryptographic hashing, typically SHA-256, to let players independently confirm that a game's outcome was not altered after a wager was placed.

The process works by having the casino lock in a server seed before each round begins. Once play ends, that seed is revealed so the result can be verified externally. It is a level of transparency that traditional online casinos have no equivalent for.

That said, the technology has clear boundaries. It applies to specific in-house titles, not to third-party slots running on standard RNG certification. Experienced bettors check exactly which games the system covers rather than accepting the feature's presence as blanket reassurance.

Withdrawal Speed and Fee Transparency

How a casino handles payouts says more about its character than any promotional copy does. Experienced bettors often run a small withdrawal test before depositing serious funds. Top-tier platforms process crypto payouts within minutes. Others have delays, unexpected verification requests, or fees that quietly reduce what a player receives.

Speed is one side of the equation. Fee clarity is the other. Hidden charges on larger withdrawals are a known issue in crypto casinos, and players cashing out four- or five-figure sums feel those costs harshly. Platforms that publish all applicable fees upfront, including network fees, build the kind of trust that brings players back consistently.

Bonus Terms and Wagering Requirements

A generous bonus headline rarely tells the full story. A 200% deposit match with a 60x wagering requirement is, in practical terms, harder to clear than a 100% match with a 20x requirement. Experienced players read the attached conditions before claiming anything.

Researching about a Jackbit bonus code is a good example of the due diligence bettors run before depositing. Knowing precisely what is required to withdraw bonus winnings removes the element of surprise that catches less careful players out.

Beyond wagering multiples, the specifics matter too: which games count toward clearing the requirement, what the maximum bet limit is during a bonus period, and when the offer expires. Bettors who overlook these details frequently find their winnings frozen behind terms they did not read.

Game Variety and Software Providers

Library size is worth considering, but provider reputation carries more weight. A catalog of 6,000 games from established developers means more than 10,000 titles from suppliers nobody has heard of. Experienced players look for recognizable names like NetEnt, Pragmatic Play, Evolution Gaming, and Hacksaw Gaming. 

Live dealer sections get assessed separately. A well-produced live casino offering, with professional dealers and reliable streaming, fills a gap that slots alone cannot address. Players who favor table games check this category closely before settling on a platform.

Customer Support Quality

Support quality is easy to overlook during registration and difficult to ignore once something goes wrong. 

Experienced bettors treat a quick support test as part of their standard review. A live chat that connects within a minute during off-peak hours indicates reliability and genuine responsiveness. Email-only support with delayed response is a concern, particularly when withdrawal disputes or account issues are on the line.

Final Thoughts

Choosing a crypto casino responsibly means holding every candidate to the same standard, something every seasoned bettor knows. This includes verifiable licensing, transparent fairness mechanisms, fast and honest payouts, practical bonus terms, games from reputable providers, and clear privacy policies from the start. Platforms that consistently meet these criteria tend to earn loyalty. Those that fall short on even one or two usually make that clear at the worst possible time. 

IN OUR BAG | OPENING UP FOR THE SEASON

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HOW TO DRESS | WHEN LEAVING THE STUDIO

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THE RISE OF ALL-IN-ONE LIFESTYLE APPS AND WHAT USERS EXPECT TODAY

In today’s digital landscape, users are increasingly drawn to platforms that combine multiple services into one seamless experience, making the idea of a lottery app a clear example of how mobile solutions now offer integrated features, easy navigation, and real-time access similar to what users expect from modern all-in-one applications like the Virginia Lottery mobile platform. The shift toward convenience-driven technology has transformed how people interact with their devices, placing greater emphasis on efficiency and usability. As a result, all-in-one lifestyle apps are becoming central to daily routines, blending functionality with accessibility in ways that were not possible just a few years ago.

The Evolution of All-in-One Applications

All-in-one lifestyle apps have evolved from simple, single-purpose tools into complex ecosystems that support a wide range of user needs. Early mobile applications focused on performing one task well, such as messaging or navigation, but modern users now expect more comprehensive solutions. This evolution reflects a broader trend in digital innovation where integration is prioritized over fragmentation.

As technology advanced, developers began merging features into unified platforms to reduce the need for multiple downloads and logins. This shift not only improves user convenience but also enhances engagement by keeping users within one environment. The result is a more streamlined experience that aligns with the fast-paced expectations of modern consumers.

Why Convenience Is Driving Adoption

Convenience has become one of the most influential factors in determining which apps users choose to adopt and keep. With limited time and increasing digital fatigue, people are naturally drawn to platforms that simplify their daily interactions. All-in-one apps eliminate the friction of switching between different services, making them highly attractive.

This demand for convenience is especially evident in regions like Virginia, where users rely on mobile platforms to access services quickly and efficiently. Whether it involves checking updates, managing tasks, or engaging with digital entertainment, users expect immediate results. Apps that deliver this level of accessibility are more likely to retain long-term users and build trust.

Key Features Users Expect Today

Modern users have developed clear expectations when it comes to all-in-one lifestyle apps. A clean interface, fast performance, and intuitive navigation are no longer optional but essential components of a successful platform. Users want to accomplish tasks quickly without unnecessary complexity or delays.

In addition to usability, personalization has become a defining feature of top-performing apps. People expect content and features that adapt to their preferences and behavior over time. This level of customization not only improves satisfaction but also creates a sense of connection between the user and the platform.

The Role of Security and Trust

As apps continue to handle more personal data and financial interactions, security has become a critical concern for users. People want assurance that their information is protected and that the platform they are using is reliable. This expectation has pushed developers to prioritize robust security measures and transparent policies.

Trust is built through consistent performance and clear communication about how data is used and protected. When users feel confident in an app’s security, they are more willing to explore its full range of features. This trust becomes a key factor in the long-term success of any all-in-one platform.

The Future of Integrated Digital Experiences

The future of all-in-one lifestyle apps lies in even deeper integration and smarter functionality. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and predictive analytics are expected to enhance how apps respond to user needs. These advancements will make platforms more proactive, offering solutions before users even realize they need them.

As competition continues to grow, developers will focus on creating experiences that feel both comprehensive and effortless. The goal is to deliver value without overwhelming the user, maintaining a balance between functionality and simplicity. This approach will define the next generation of mobile applications.

All-in-one lifestyle apps are no longer just a trend but a fundamental shift in how digital services are designed and consumed. By combining convenience, personalization, and security, these platforms are meeting the evolving expectations of modern users. As technology continues to advance, the demand for seamless, integrated experiences will only grow, shaping the future of mobile interaction in meaningful ways.

ATHLEISURE BEAUTY

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CHOCOLATE BEAUTY

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WHAT TO EXPECT IN A HAIR EXTENSION CLASS

Hair extensions are a popular beauty service that can add volume, length, and style to clients' hair. If you’re looking to expand your skills as a stylist or dive into the world of hair extensions, enrolling in a class can provide you with the knowledge and hands-on experience needed to offer this service confidently. In this article, we’ll explore what you can expect to learn in a hair extension class, focusing on the techniques, tools, and skills you'll acquire.

Understanding Different Types of Hair Extensions

One of the first things you’ll learn in hair extension courses is the variety of extension types available. Different methods require different techniques and tools. You will be introduced to popular methods like tape-in, clip-in, fusion, micro-bead, and sew-in extensions. Each method has its own set of benefits depending on the client’s hair type, desired look, and longevity preferences.

For example, tape-in extensions are quick and easy to apply, offering a natural look, while fusion extensions are more permanent and require heat to bond the extensions to natural hair. You’ll be taught how to choose the right method for your client’s needs, ensuring you provide them with the best results.

Proper Application and Placement Techniques

The core of any hair extension class is learning how to apply the extensions correctly. Proper placement is essential to achieving a seamless, natural look while ensuring the extensions stay in place. You’ll practice applying extensions using various methods, focusing on techniques like sectioning the hair, securing the extensions, and ensuring a flawless blend with the natural hair.

Understanding the correct amount of tension when applying extensions is critical to preventing damage to the client’s hair. During the course, you’ll learn how to work with different hair textures and lengths, making adjustments to suit each client’s needs.

Blending Techniques for a Natural Look

Blending is an essential skill taught in hair extension courses. After applying the extensions, you’ll learn how to cut and style them to match the client’s natural hair. The goal is to create a seamless blend where the extensions look like they naturally belong with the client’s hair.

You’ll also learn how to choose the right color for the extensions to match your client’s hair color. This may include selecting highlights, lowlights, or ombre extensions to create a cohesive look. Blending techniques will also cover how to texturize the extensions so they move naturally with the hair, giving the client a more organic appearance.

Tools and Equipment You Will Use

Throughout the course, you will become familiar with the tools needed for proper hair extension application. Depending on the method you are learning, these tools can include extension pliers, beads, needles and thread, or heat tools for fusion extensions. Understanding how to use each tool correctly is essential to achieving the best results.

You’ll also learn about the different types of hair used for extensions, such as Remy hair, and how to select the right hair based on your client’s needs. The quality of the hair and tools will directly affect the final result, so mastering the use of your equipment is a crucial part of your training.

Maintenance and Aftercare

Once the extensions are applied, your training will cover how to guide your clients in maintaining their extensions. Proper care is necessary to ensure that the extensions last as long as possible and continue to look good. You’ll learn how to provide aftercare instructions, including how to wash, condition, and detangle the hair to avoid damage.

Additionally, you’ll be taught how to troubleshoot common problems that clients may face, such as slipping extensions or tangling. Providing clients with the right maintenance advice can help you build trust and ensure they return for future services.

Client Consultation

A good hair extension class will also teach you how to conduct a thorough client consultation. During this process, you’ll learn how to assess your client’s hair type and lifestyle to recommend the best extension method. You’ll also discuss their expectations and explain the process in detail, so they know what to expect.

Understanding how to set realistic expectations is vital for client satisfaction. You’ll learn how to discuss the longevity of extensions, the maintenance required, and the cost involved, ensuring that your clients are well-informed.

Conclusion

A hair extension class is an excellent opportunity to gain the skills and knowledge required to offer this sought-after service. From learning about different types of extensions and mastering application techniques to perfecting blending and providing aftercare, these courses provide everything you need to succeed in the hair extension industry. By the end of the class, you’ll be equipped to offer high-quality, professional hair extension services that will leave your clients looking and feeling their best.

HOW FANS EXPRESS LOYALTY THROUGH SPORTS APPAREL

Sports fandom runs deeper than watching games. It is identity, community, and emotional investment. One of the most visible ways fans show loyalty is through sports apparel. What people wear sends a clear message about who they support and how strongly they feel about it.

From jerseys to caps, apparel connects fans to teams, players, and moments. It turns spectators into participants. In today’s culture, sports clothing also crosses into everyday fashion, making loyalty visible far beyond the stadium.

The Emotional Connection Behind Sports Apparel

Wearing team gear is not just about style. It represents belonging. Fans associate apparel with memories of wins, losses, and shared experiences. A jersey can remind someone of a championship game or a childhood moment with family.

This emotional layer is what makes sports apparel powerful. It allows fans to carry their loyalty into daily life. Whether walking through the city or watching a game at home, the connection remains constant.

For many, apparel also creates a sense of unity. Seeing others wear the same colors builds instant recognition. It forms a bond between strangers who share the same passion. That connection is especially strong during major events when fans gather in large numbers.

Jerseys as the Ultimate Symbol of Loyalty

Jerseys hold a unique place in sports culture. They represent the closest link between fans and players. Wearing a jersey is like stepping into the role of the athlete, even if only symbolically.

Customization has made jerseys even more personal. Fans can choose their favorite player or add their own name. This adds a layer of ownership and identity. Many turn to options like baseball jerseys custom made to create something that reflects their individual connection to the team.

• Player jerseys that honor favorite athletes

• Custom names and numbers for personal identity

• Throwback designs that celebrate team history

• Limited edition releases tied to major events

Jerseys are not just clothing. They are statements of loyalty that evolve with the fan’s journey.

Everyday Apparel and Streetwear Influence

Sports apparel has moved beyond game day. It is now part of everyday fashion. Hoodies, sneakers, and caps with team branding are worn in casual settings, blending sports culture with streetwear.

This shift has expanded how fans express loyalty. You no longer need to be at a stadium to show support. Wearing a team hoodie to a coffee shop or gym still signals allegiance. It also introduces teams to new audiences who may engage with the brand through fashion first.

Athleisure trends have played a major role in this evolution. Comfortable, functional clothing fits modern lifestyles. Sports brands have responded by creating apparel that works both for performance and daily wear.

Social Identity and Group Belonging

Sports apparel plays a strong role in shaping social identity. Fans use clothing to align themselves with a group. This can be a local team, a national squad, or even a global franchise.

Wearing team colors often reflects pride in a city or region. It can also signal shared values, such as resilience or competitiveness. For many fans, supporting a team is tied to personal identity.

• Regional pride expressed through team colors

• Community connection during games and events

• Shared rituals like wearing jerseys on game day

• Generational loyalty passed through families

This group identity strengthens fan engagement and keeps traditions alive across generations.

The Role of Game Day Traditions

Game day amplifies the importance of sports apparel. Fans plan outfits that reflect their excitement and commitment. Some wear the same jersey for every match, believing it brings luck.

These rituals create consistency and emotional investment. Apparel becomes part of the experience, not just an accessory. Stadiums filled with coordinated colors create a powerful visual impact that enhances the atmosphere.

Tailgating events, watch parties, and fan meetups also highlight the role of apparel. It helps fans stand out while still being part of a larger group. This balance between individuality and unity is key to sports culture.

Digital Influence and Global Reach

Social media has expanded how fans showcase loyalty. Posting photos in team gear allows fans to share their support with a global audience. It also influences others to engage with the same teams and styles.

Athletes and influencers play a major role in this space. When they wear certain apparel, it drives demand and shapes trends. Fans often follow these cues, blending admiration for players with personal style choices.

Online stores and global shipping have made it easier for fans worldwide to access team merchandise. This has turned local teams into international brands, with apparel acting as a key driver of global recognition.

Collectibility and Limited Editions

For some fans, sports apparel goes beyond wearing it. It becomes collectible. Limited edition releases and special collaborations create a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

Owning rare pieces can feel like holding a piece of history. These items often increase in value over time, especially if tied to significant events or players. Collectors see apparel as both a passion and an investment.

Brands use this strategy to maintain excitement and engagement. By releasing unique designs, they keep fans interested and eager to expand their collections.

Conclusion

Sports apparel is one of the most powerful ways fans express loyalty. It combines emotion, identity, and style into something visible and personal. From jerseys to everyday wear, each piece tells a story about connection and commitment.

As sports culture continues to evolve, apparel will remain at the center of fan expression. It bridges the gap between teams and supporters, turning loyalty into something that can be seen, shared, and celebrated every day.

ATHLEISURE MAG #124 | CHEF AYESHA NURDJAJA

In this month’s issue, our front and back cover story is with Chef/Partner of Shuka and Shukette, James Beard Award Finalist Best Chef NY State, Titan on S4 and the upcoming S5 of Food Network's Bobby's Triple Threat, Chef Ayesha Nurdjaja. We talk with her about how she got into the industry, her passion for her cuisine, why she loves appearing on TV shows and food festivals, Bobby's Triple Threat, and her upcoming cook, Mediterranean All the Way which you can pre-order now.

On April 16th, we attended the Youth America Grand Prix for their 2026 Stars of Today, Meet the Stars of Tomorrow Gala which brought the best ballet talent together from those that are rising stars to those we enjoy seeing on the stage. This year, Misty Copeland hosted and there were a number of people honored at this event, performances, and an auction for designer pointe shoes. 

We sat down with Creative Director, and Costume Designer, June Ambrose who is known for creating iconic looks for Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, and so much more. We talk about her love for creating dynamic looks, her favorite projects, and her latest capsule collection for June Ambrose X Naturalizer.

Who doesn't enjoy a Staycation? During the month of April, we made our way to Muse New York to enjoy a few days during the week in our suite that had a private balcony, spacious spaces, luxurious amenities, and is centrally located to a number of places in Times Square/Theater District and Rockefeller Center.

Football season isn't too far away! We caught up with NFL Super Bowl Champ Wide Receiver of the Kansas City Chiefs, JuJu Smith-Schuster to talk about the game, looking forward to the upcoming season, his upcoming nuptials and his grooming routine. 

We took some time to catch up with singer/songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Rock & Roll Hall of Famer icon and successful entrepreneur, Sammy Hagar to talk about his career, his passion for music and how he got into the industry, wellness, and why he wanted to launch his own supplements in partnership with Wayne Gorsek's Nature Labs.

We had the pleasure of talking with Founder, Dr. Kate Ackerman of Women's Health and Sports Performance Institute to talk about why this institute exists, projects they are involved in and why this is beneficial for women who are professional/semi-professionals, and beyond.

During the month of April, we had another successful Athleisure Mag Summit Series which was hosted at NRTHRN Strong, a modality that is based in cross-country skiing that is a great low-impact total body workout. We sat down with its Founder, Nicoline Roth to talk about how she came to the industry, why she wanted to create this fitness method, walked us through her Flatiron location as well as the flagship in Coppenhagen, and what we can expect in the coming months.

Knowing more about where you come from and tracking down your family roots can be quite a task! We sat down with Ancestry.com's Sr. Story Producer, Nicka Sewell-Smith to find out how we can take the stories that we know, the records that we collection, and keeping an open mind to be the family historian!

This month, our tastebuds were satisfied with a number of meals such as a recent trip to Tokyo Record Bar where we enjoyed a 7-course Omakase menu in their Jewel Box while listening to vinyl from their superb audiophile setup that guests selected prior to the meal. We talk about the restaurant, its dishes, and more.

We attended the launch of Prince Street Pizza X Sergio Tacchini launch where in addition to trying a number of slices, we were able to enjoy a series of performances by Gashi while enjoying a cool Spring night in their courtyard. 

In addition, we enjoyed epic French Dips at Salt Hank's where we spent some time with Chef Daniel Rubenfeld as we enjoyed cheese pulls, satisfying sandwiches, and an all around great vibe.

We also had a phenomenal dinner at Ginger Ristoranti which has locations in Rome and launched its first US eatery here in NYC near Rockefeller Center. They bring nourishing and satisfying Italian dishes along with a focus on wellness that is incorporated into their meals and smoothies/juices. We enjoyed a number of dishes along with inventive cocktails. 

This month's The Art of the Snack takes us to DC and Maryland with 2FIFTY Texas BBQ which is known for their Texas style focus of sauce and grilling meats.

This month's Athleisure List comes from 1898 The Post + Porter’s House, a boutique hotel in Belgium and F1 Arcade in Las Vegas! 

Our 9LIST STORI3S comes from June Ambrose where she shares her must-haves in beauty, style, and fitness. Our 9PLAYLIST comes from what the crew of Artemis II listened to while in space! Our 9LIST ROUTIN3S comes from Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek, Dr. Death, and The Affair) to share what he enjoys, does, or has Morning, Afternoon, and Night. Our THE 9LIST 9M3NU comes from Chef Gabriel Lucca of Ginger Ristoranti, Chef/Pitmaster, and Founder Fernando Gonzalez of 2FIFTY Texas BBQ, and Tokyo Record Bar's Chef Ignacia Valdes.

Read the APR ISSUE #124 of Athleisure Mag.

SURFING THE DREAM | CAROLINE MARKS

The World Surf League’s Tour kicks off the season on Apr 1st for the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach and we can’t wait to see some phenomenal surfing. One of the competitors that we will have our eye on is Caroline Marks WSL Champion for 2023, Olympic Gold Medalist from Paris 2024 and is currently ranked World #2 for the 2025 season.

We wanted to know more about her love for surfing, how she came to it, and how she stays in shape when she is hitting those barrels! We also wanted to know more about her soon to be released Red Bull film, Now Days, her brand Pro Balance Brands, and her recent ambassadorship with Lexus!

ATHLEISURE MAG: It’s so great to connect with you!

CAROLINE MARKS: Hello! I’m currently over in Australia. I’m starting my season, actually the first day of the waiting period is tomorrow!

AM: It’s great to have you as this month’s cover!

CM: I’m really excited. You’ve had a couple people I know on the cover, so that’s pretty cool. I just surfed this morning, now I am talking with you, and then I will be back out surfing!

AM: We assumed!

What is your first memory of surfing and when did you fall in love with it?

CM: My first memory is pretty funny, because there’s actually a photo of it. I was in Costa Rica with my dad and I was on the front of his longboard. I was super young, maybe 3 years old. Then there’s another photo of me and I’m literally standing parallel and my borther’s like in the ackground and he’s kind of making that, “oh my gosh face.” I have a little bow in my hair and it’s pretty cute. I remember falling in love with it. It’s pretty funny because I surfed when I was little and then I actually got into horseback riding while growing up. I loved animals and stuff so I actually wanted to be a veterinarian when I was younger and then started barrel racing competitively, and did that until I was 10 and then didn’t really surf much then.

My oldest brother Luke was a competitive surfer so I kind of just thought surfing was his thing and I just kind of let him do his thing and I rode horses, and then I pretty much just wanted to impress my brothers really bad, and that’s why I started surfing. Then I remember when I was 11 years old, I was at the U12s Girls. There’s this event called USA Championships at Lower Trestles and it’s the biggest amateur event as a kid. All the best kids from Hawaii, all the east coast kids, and all the west coast kids come out and compete at Lowers and I ended up entering the event just because my brother was in it and I ended up winning. I was like, “whoa, I must be all right at this!” I just remember getting this big trophy and surfing all day and just having so much fun. I couldn’t believe this is a thing you can do you know? So, I remember from that moment forward, that I want to do this. This is so fun. So that’s where I really was like, I want to be a professional surfer. Wherever it takes me, I’m having so much fun.

AM: Not to say that there is, but is there a similarity or some kind of crossover between barrel racing and surfing for you?

CM: I mean, yeah, if you think about it, I was actually talking about this the other day in an interview, which is funny. I never thought of it like this, but you are on something that’s very out of your control. The ocean’s very, very out of your control. You’re on an animal and you don’t really know what it’s going to do. You can try to control it, but you really can’t. You know, they have a mind of their own.

I guess trying to go fast, like in surfing, going fast is a good thing. It’s like riding horses, that’s kind of like an art. And so certainly, you’re swerving around the barrels and in surfing, you’re riding the waves. I guess there is a little bit of crossover, more than I realized. So it’s pretty funny.

I’ve got some funny photos when I was like little. It was pretty classic.

AM: Obviously surfing on its own is a great sport, you know, for the total body to stay in shape. But what are work3outs that you do to optimize yourself in the sport?

CM: I love Pilates! Core and surfing is really important. I do a lot of lower leg work in surfing. Definitely having strong legs is really important because obviously you’re on the board a lot. I also love swimming because it’s just really good for your paddling and really good for your lungs and breathing and stuff. So those 3 things I do as well as cycle in between. Biking and swimming are kind of the things that I go back and forth between, but I mostly do Pilates and then just typical stuff in the gym with my trainers.

AM: What is your favorite maneuver when you’re surfing?

CM: This isn’t really a maneuver, but getting barreled is probably the ultimate feeling as a surfer!

AM: Oh wow!

CM: Oh yeah! You’re obviously in the tunnel of the waves.

AM: It looks so beautiful, but it looks so scary at the same time!

CM: Oh yeah, it is a bit of both for sure, but definitely getting barreled is something that’s just such an amazing feeling and then just doing a big frontside carve obviously just like laying into a big turn that always feels really good going really fast and just like laying into it. So those two things I like!

AM: You are a 2X Olympian who won a Gold medal in Paris. What has that meant to you to surf on such a global stage – you have had many stages, but what does it mean to do it for the Olympics?

CM: The Olympics, it doesn’t really get any bigger than that you know? It’s obviously a very global thing. It’s one of the only things that brings the whole world together. Not everyone knows about surfing, but everyone knows about the Olympics.

AM: Right.

CM: I was really proud to represent my country on that big of a stage and obviously to win. I mean, it’s just so incredible. It’s definitely the proudest moment in my career. I mean, it’s obviously about the world title. It’s hard to say one win for a WSL Championship versus the Olympics as both were the biggest dreams of mine as a little girl and the fact that I did both of them at 22 is pretty crazy! I am super grateful. It was amazing and it’s pretty hard to describe the feeling of being able to represent your country, but I’m really proud.

AM: Are you thinking about LA28?

CM: Of course! I want to be in as many Olympics as possible, but obviously, you know, LA28, it’s at a wave that’s like Lower Trestles. It’s 5 minutes from my house and obviously to be the hosting nation is just extra motivation because, it’s at home, which is pretty incredible. So I’m definitely thinking about it for sure.

AM: We can see you there! Anytime we’ve seen you surf, we can see you’re in your element and are just happy to be one with the water, it’s all zen and then we see you owning that barrel!

CM: Surfing has brought me everything really - a lot of the best moments of my life. I’ve met some of my best friends through surfing. The ocean is such a healing place for me, which is pretty cool to be able to say that about my job.

AM: Yeah.

CM: My career is - I just go in the ocean. Your day is instantly better, which is pretty amazing.

AM: You just mentioned at the top that the World Surf League Championship Tour kicks off its 50th season starting tomorrow for the first on-call day in Australia for the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach at Bells Beach in Victoria, Australia from Apr 1 – Apr 11th. What are you looking forward to as it kicks off?

CM: Yeah. I mean, first off, we’ve had our longest off-season of our career.

AM: Yeah.

CM: Just with them changing it around the schedule. It used to be - well way back, before it was my first couple years on tour it was April - December and then they switched it to January – September. It’s been that way for 5 years and now it’s back to April so in order for them to do that, we ended up having a 7 month long off season which for us, that’s a very long time. So usually our off season is pretty short compared to other sports. I think everyone’s just very excited because you haven’t really seen us in jerseys in a while! We also have some of the goats coming back like Carissa Moore and Stephanie Gilmore, which is amazing and they also extended the Women’s Tour, so there’s a lot of like milestones that have been broken this year already! I think everyone’s just really excited to see what happens. I have no doubt it’s just going to be a firework of a year. So I’m pretty excited.

AM: What’s your favorite one on the WSL Tour?

CM: Well, that’s a hard one. I know.

AM: We ask the tough questions!

CM: It’s a hard one. I mean, Cloudbreak’s pretty incredible. It’s such an incredible wave. Jeffreys Bay, which actually is not on tour this year, but it’s in South Africa, that’s another iconic one. Tahiti, obviously, just from winning the Gold there. I just have a lot of great memories there. And then Lower Trestles, of course. Lowers and Tahiti are probably my favorites, just with Lowers being in my backyard. It’s just such a fun wave. But it’s hard because everywhere has such beautiful things about it. But I’d say Lowers is probably my favorite wave on tour.

AM: Clearly you travel around the world to different places quite frequently. Are there 3 items that you tend to take with you to make any city or stop kind of feel like home?

CM: I mean, definitely. I’m not really one to bring a pillow. We just have so much stuff. We have our board bag, all of our clothes, and stuff like that. But I think just like a shirt from home, something I sleep in at home, just bringing it on the road. It’s the little things like that which kind of make me feel more at home or your favorite coffee cup or whatever things just make you feel more homey. But I feel like I’ve gotten so used to traveling that I’m able to adapt to it pretty quickly. I do travel with an eye mask. That’s something I do travel with to sleep on the planes with. That’s important. But nothing too crazy. Actually, this year my sister-in-law packed me a good luck charm in my bag so I just leave it in my luggage and it goes everywhere I go which is pretty cool!

AM: You definitely know it’s always there because it’s just in the luggage waiting to go.

CM: Exactly! i just leave it in there and it’s a little good luck charm which is kind of cool. I’m not too much of a creature of habit in that sense. I kind of just go with the flow.

AM: We had the pleasure of watching the screener for Now Days right before chatting with you. This is such a great film and so enjoyable to watch. It’s shot beautifully and it’s really great to see the 6 of you being able to navigate the waves and to tell your story. You recently had an event for this here in NY even though the film debuts in May. Why did you love being part of this film and what can you tell us about this?

CM: Thank you so much. I’m stoked you got to watch it. First off, there hasn’t been an all female surf film since 2011 and that was Leave a Message. That film left such an impact on me and I know it has for many other girls. It was so cool to see that. As much as it sounds simple to do, an all-female star film, it’s so difficult to get everyone together. We all have crazy schedules from different countries. We’re also each other’s biggest rivals.

AM: Right.

CM: That’s another thing that’s pretty funny, but I’m just really proud of it. I think, you know, obviously hopefully it inspires the next generation. And I feel like... that’s kind of our job in this generation is to inspire the next one and to push this forward and grow this forward and that’s what the generations did before us! That’s why we have equal pay. The girls in this film and this generation, I feel like we just had very good timing. All the girls before us that fought for this and for us and so now this film hopefully inspires the next generation to go harder and to push more. I’m really confident in that and I’m just really proud of it you know? It’s like two and a half years in the making coming to Red Bull and anything they put their hands on is pretty special. I knew the surfing was going to be amazing, but I also love how it tells a story of “hey, we all obviously want to win.

Surfing is a very cutthroat individual sport, but we also like pushing each other in a healthy environment and we are all good friends.” You know, I see these girls more than my family most of the year.

AM: Yeah.

CM: I’m with them so much. So, it really shows that. And we’re all able to relate to each other in a way that we probably won’t with our other friends, because we live this exact same life. So, yeah, I’m super proud of it and I just hope that the young girls, young guys, whoever watches it is just really inspired and wants to go surfing. It’s pretty cool to see the fruits of the labor because it definitely was a lot of work, but it was worth it!

AM: 100%! One of the things we like most about Red Bull films is when they have a number of individuals within the same sport, like Mark McMorris who was our cover this past December, he had just debuted PAVED.

CM: Yeah.

AM: It’s incredible to see people in a sport, but to see the individuality as well as the things that bind them together, it’s just so cool. We don’t surf; however, living in NY we love the surfing culture in Rockaway and Long Beach. It’s so cool to see how surfers show drive, grace, and flow which is what is evident in this film. People are going to enjoy it once it premieres.

CM: Thanks so much! I hope so. There’s definitely been even for this event, there’s been a lot of people asking about it, which has been really cool to see the hype around it. You know, it was something that was out of my comfort zone. Like I’ve always been so just hyper focused on competing and winning. That’s really what it takes in order to win. So this was cool because it was something that was new to me and different. I’ve never done a film like this before. So I was really proud of that.

AM: Well, you also just became a surf ambassador for Lexus, which is awesome. Why are you excited about this partnership? And why did you feel it was synergistic to your brand?

CM: Yeah, I mean, first off, Lexus makes such cool cars. And one of my friends, Griffin Colapinto, he got signed a year prior to me.

AM: Another cover of ours.

CM: Yeah! So I think just seeing the car and seeing how it fits my lifestyle, it’s a great combination between, sporty and luxury - I really like that. I like how they celebrate that. Also just getting to know everyone behind Lexus, everyone’s really cool. It’s a very family-oriented vibe, and I come from a big family, so I really love that. And so... I feel like it was a great partnership. I got one here in Australia with me and everyone’s like, nice car, nice wheels. I’m getting all the compliments on it.

AM: Wow.

CM: It’s pretty cool. I got to roll to the first event in style, it looks so cool.

AM: We have a Lexus SUV which is great because sometimes for the magazine between photography gear, styling items, transporting the team to shoots or even doing an event with goodie bags, you need to be able to carry everything – it needs to be fashionable, but you want to be able to get to where you have to go with everything in one piece.

CM: Absolutely. I feel like it fits all my boards. It fits wetsuits, everything I need. And also like it’s comfortable and it’s safe and it’s sturdy. And I also just love it aesthetically. I love and have the GX 550. I love the way it looks. So that’s also a bonus. I’m proud to drive the car. So yeah, it’s awesome.

AM: Well, what does the partnership look like in terms of what can we expect to see you doing with them and with the car? What will that look like from a consumer side?

CM: So Griffin and I, we’re going to do some collab videos here. We’re both in Australia, which will be pretty fun. So there’s a lot of beautiful beaches here, a lot of great scenery. So stay tuned for a cool video with that. And obviously, you know, I’m going to be traveling a lot this year. But wherever they provide me a car, we’re going to be providing content. Lexus sponsors the U.S. Open, so I look forward to seeing what they have in store for this year’s event. I think I’m doing a signing with them. We have great things coming up. And yeah, I’m really excited about it.

AM: Clearly you’re a business person as an athlete and someone who has a number of sponsors, and you have added to your portfolio by creating your own brand, Pro Balance Bands. Tell us about this and why did you want to launch it?

CM: Thanks for asking. It’s cool. My dad, he’s very business-minded. He comes from that background. He taught me a lot about that side of the world, which is really cool. I really trust his opinion. I think after the Gold medal, we kind of thought, how do we capitalize on this? The bands felt so natural to me and and my main thing was, I travel a lot and I don’t want to put a product out that I can’t travel with because most of my life is on the road, So the bands feels so perfect. I’ve also been training with them since I started working out way more consistently in 2019, my second year on tour and that was the year I made the first Olympics. I just use bands everywhere and I bring them everywhere I go. They come in like a little pouch. It’s great and you can do a lot with bands so it felt so natural and it’s been really fun.

It’s my first time starting a company and obviously I have a lot of help doing it, but, it’s been really cool and all the bands are really good material. I use them every single day. So it’s great. You’ll see me if you watch the webcast warming up with them. So I’m really proud of it and it’s been going good so far. I think we’re going to come out with some new products as well.

AM: Nice.

CM: We started with the bands, but we’re going to keep adding more things in. We also have weekly videos of myself, my brother, our other ambassadors doing videos as well. My trainer too, he does videos, which is cool. So if you want to know how I train, you just go on the website Pro Balance Bands or on our YouTube. It’s exciting and I’m enjoying it. It’s been fun.

AM: Well, when you’re not on tour or shooting campaigns or doing all these different things, how do you take time for yourself just to have a moment to yourself?

CM: Honestly, I’m a pretty simple girl. I love just being with my friends whether it’s as simple as, you know, going to get a coffee or going out for dinner or watching the sunset. Things like that bring me a lot of joy. I think just kind of being in one place and being with good people - I call it my “feel good people.” When you’re around people you really know, there’s no effort.

AM: Exactly.

CM: You end up leaving hanging out with them with more in your battery - it becomes more full. It’s how I recharge. And I also do love my own alone time as well. I just love whether that’s just sitting on my couch at home or just going for a drive, that’s also really therapeutic to me as well or going on a beach walk or whatever. Things like that sound really silly, but that’s kind of how, what helps me unwind and I love that.

AM: Being that you’re in that next generation of surfers, you’re trailblazing, you’ve gotten all these different awards and accolades. What do you want your legacy to be seen as in this sport or even in life?

CM: I mean, I just really want girls and people in general to be inspired. I love surfing. It’s really fun to me and I hope I kind of give off that persona. I just want to leave a legacy of being hardworking, but also enjoying your life too. You know, it can’t always just be like work, work, work like this. We live such an amazing life and we should enjoy it. And there’s more to it than surfing too. We’re in these different countries. We’re in different cultures. It’s really cool. Obviously surfing is what brought me here. But there’s so much more than that. And I think hopefully I can leave a legacy of just a really positive outlook on life, surfing, and fun. I hope that makes sense.

AM: It does. We always think about that when you’re doing stuff, especially now that obviously we live in an age where people can see stuff socially, you’re touching corners of the world that someone who grew up that isn’t living your life or experiences personally, they can envision that for themselves. Maybe if it’s not that same thing, but something similar and it just creates a spark and wonder. So that’s really cool.

IG @caroline_markss

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | FRONT COVER. PG 16 ,PD 24, PG 26 Ed Sloane/World Surf League | PG 19 Tony Heff/World Surf League | PG 20, PG 29 Brent Bielmann/World Surf League | PG 22 ROXY | PG 30 Ryan Miller/Red Bull Content Pool | PG 33 USA Surfing | PG 34 Domenic Mosqueira/Red Bull Content Pool | PG 36 Nathan Adams/ Red Bull Content Pool | PG 38 Marcelo Marafni | BACK COVER CHAMPION |

Read the MAR ISSUE #123 of Athleisure Mag and see SURFING THE DREAM | Caroline Marks in mag.

WHAT TO WEAR IN AND OUT OF THE GYM: SEASONAL TRENDS

Gym style in 2026 is less uniform than it looked two years ago. A January 9, 2026, trend report from Who What Wear pointed to layering tops, do-it-all separates, and sharper trainer choices, while Nike’s current NikeSKIMS page splits the offer into Matte, Shine, Airy, and Weightless instead of pushing one flat set formula. That tells the story early: people still want performance, but they also want pieces that survive the commute, the coffee stop, and the 6 p.m. grocery run.

PHOTO CREDIT | Pexels/Cottonbro Studio

The Matching Set Lost Its Monopoly

The old head-to-toe set has not disappeared, but it no longer controls the room. Spring dressing now leans on a bra top under a light zip layer, a cropped shell over leggings, or a fitted tank that can sit under a blazer after a 7 a.m. session. Vogue’s late-2025 styling note on hoodies, windbreakers, sweatpants, and black leggings still reads correctly in April 2026 because the practical pieces are the ones people keep reaching for when the weather moves from 11°C in the morning to a warmer afternoon.

Spring Starts With Layers

Layering is not decoration; it is function. The strongest spring looks use one breathable base, one easy top layer, and a shoe that does not look stranded outside the gym, which is why light anoraks and half-zips are holding ground in city wardrobes from New York to London. A small detail matters here: the best outfits keep the hem clean and the neckline simple, because once drawstrings, oversized logos, and contrast piping pile up, the outfit starts reading as kit rather than clothing.

Summer Belongs to the Shoe

Footwear is doing more of the work once handled by loud leggings. Reuters reported on March 3, 2026, that On posted a 23% rise in annual sales and expected its gross profit margin to reach 63%, which helps explain why performance-running silhouettes are still driving the conversation. At the same time, Who What Wear’s February 21, 2026, trainer report tracked retro shapes, gum soles, cobalt blue, and patent finishes around Dakota Johnson’s off-duty rotation. Trainers carry the look now.

One Screen, Two Habits

The gym outfit no longer lives only in the locker room mirror. It is chosen on a 6.1-inch phone screen, judged in motion on a train platform, and compared against ten other looks between a score alert and a grocery order. In that same phone-first routine, online betting sits beside live scores, fitness apps, and retail checkouts as another short-burst behavior built around speed, visibility, and frictionless taps. The brands that understand this are building wardrobes for people who move between a reformer class, a Champions League highlight clip, and an evening walk without wanting a full change in between.

Fall Brings Back Shape

Autumn is when silhouettes start to separate the good wardrobes from the lazy ones. Who What Wear’s December 27, 2025, roundup put bootcut, chocolate brown, stirrup, and split-hem leggings on the 2026 map, and those shapes make sense because they sit better with trench coats, bombers, and longer knits than the old ankle-hugging default. Another clue arrived on February 26, 2026, when adidas announced its first collaboration with Simone Rocha in London: track jackets and sporty separates were no longer being framed as pure performance gear, but as pieces with enough structure to leave the studio and keep going.

The App Test Is Ruthless

Fit errors are punished more quickly now because buyers zoom in, scroll, and compare before they ever touch the fabric. Reuters reported on January 22, 2026, that Lululemon resumed online sales of its Get Low workout line after complaints that the leggings turned see-through when bending or squatting, and that the company changed its sizing guidance rather than the $108 tights themselves. That is why MelBet bd apk belongs in the same broader mobile conversation as interval timers, live-score alerts, and shopping apps: users judge all of them by speed, clarity, and how few dead taps stand between intent and action. Fabric matters.

Winter Keeps the Honest Pieces

Cold-weather gym dressing is still won by the boring items that do their job. A straight black legging, a decent crew sock, a clean fleece, and an outer shell that can handle wind at 8 a.m. still beat novelty once the temperature drops and daylight disappears before the return walk home. Fit decides. The pieces that keep earning wear from February into October are usually the ones that do not ask for attention, only repetition.

MAESTRO OF MAGIC | DEBORAH CZERESKO

We spent an afternoon with Deborah Czeresko at Brooklyn Glass making three of her acclaimed and well-sought after Forgotten Potatoes with her, and her assistant Em. An acclaimed NYC-based artist and designer, Deborah is best known for her work with glass. She won the inaugural season of Netflix’s Blown Away glass competition show in 2019, where contestants compete in glassblowing challenges for prizes and the title of champion. Her work challenges societal norms with elegant, sophisticated and often whimsical themes rooted in gender and feminism. Her work has been shown in Corning Museum of Glass and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

We love how she is such a deep thinker and super creative in speaking is art and metaphor. An extremely thoughtful and determined creative, we were honored to spend working time together to truly embrace the elegant fierce fragility that glass blowing presents at this top level. It was truly exciting to see her in action and hear her stories about past, present and future projects.

We first met her and her lovely partner, Three, on the eve of our January Cover drop, where we enjoyed Diageo’s legendary Burn’s Supper Night in NYC together, complete with Haggis, Poetry & Song, Bagpipes, and a medley of favorite Scottish Whiskey’s Johnnie Walker Blue Label, Oban Single Malt, Buchanan’s Blended Scotch Whiskey, and more.

ATHLEISURE MAG: You said glass was your first love, what were those first moments for you?

DEBORAH CZERESKO: It felt like a real true love. Like when you just are instantly attracted to something. It’s sort of fourth dimensional on some undefinable plane what you’re feeling, this kind of attraction, because it combines all the things you don’t know about yourself necessarily at that time. Like when I was younger and why was this material for me? It seemed kind of mystical and magical [and] what I didn’t know is the intelligence that I had in connecting to it in a physical way and in a conceptual way. I mean, now I can intellectualize it, but then I was just instinct-driven.

AM: And you knew it off the bat or within, say the first month - or looking back now, you’re saying that?

DC: Oh no. The moment I saw the glass, hot glass, I knew this was for me. So, first of all, you’re sculpting a fluid. That’s not like sculpting any other material. The stuff is flowing… [i]t’s a weird way to think that you’re actually sculpting a liquid. It’s the weirdness of how you sculpt this and the weirdness of the material itself. The material seems otherworldly when it’s hot, so it’s like lava. I was really attracted to the fact that this stuff seems so atypical and not stereotypical as a medium, really. So it definitely feels magical.

AM: So what does glass allow you to say that other materials wouldn’t let you do?

DC: Well, I touched on the fluidity, and also it’s transparency. So that’s something you can’t find in that many materials. So anything having to do with transparency and fluidity and this moving from different states in this particular way, in the middle of kind of a binary - it’s not soft and it’s not hard - it’s a fluid. So it’s constantly moving and even in its perceived state, when it’s cold it’s called a super cooled liquid, so I think you can say anything with glass they can say with any other material, but with glass I think the fluidity, and it inherently brings fragility on one side and then fierceness on the other.

And then at some point it becomes permanent. So when you’re working on it you’re able to go from A to B, and then a number of stops, and then you’re in control and you’re changing things. But at some point you lose control, right? At some point it’s beyond adapting, like after placing it in the annealer. The minute it’s in the annealer, you can’t then take the glasswork and put it back in the fire and remold it again right, so at some point you lose control.

I would say if we were having a dialogue with this material, it’s more like speaking this material’s language. It’s not going to speak our language, it’s not human, and when you can’t be receptive enough to learn about this material as it is [ultimately] going to take control. It’s going to dominate as dominant material, and that’s one thing about it in its property. It doesn’t look that way, it’s so demure in a way when you just look at a glass thing like a huge hunk of 100 pound glass could look like an enormous ghost, but it’s this massive thing that has these strengths you can’t even see and it’s just demanding that you sort it in a soft way to to be at one with it, rather than collaborate withn it.

AM: So how do you approach a project? What are some of the steps you take initially? Generally what do major project timelines look like?

DC: For my own artwork project or one initiated by a prompt of some sort, like as in the case of the large piece I did for the public school called “Everybody’s Gotta Eat,” in that case, I was told where the piece would be going. So it’s going to a public school for grades 1-6 outside of the school cafeteria. And so, the other criterion was to be significant and relevant for 100 years, and immediately that’s very intimidating. How could anything I say or do be relevant for 100 years, when the world is changing so rapidly at this point? I don’t know what demographic of person is going to be there, or even if the school is going to be a public school for that long. Let’s assume it is, so then I have to fit within those boundaries, but that’s a pretty open criteria. So I start thinking about the dialogue and the vernacular. I’ve started to create with my own work and how that can fit into that parameter. In that case, I submitted an initial idea and was asked to modify that idea because they really wanted the idea to be primarily glass. I submitted an idea that had a lot of metal in it because the project was so large and had to take up so much space. And glass is rather expensive, well so is metal, but I tried to occupy the space in other ways than just glass objects. So I started to think in terms of those limitations, and also financial in that situation. So that’s a commissioned piece.

Now, in the case of my own imagination, without any limits, I’m thinking about what I’m going to make all the time. I never am not thinking about those ideas and how what I want to put forward conceptually can be connected to some kind of form. And in recent years, I’ve been doing realistic forms, like eggs, for example, I’ve become synonymous with the egg. What kind of symbolism does that have? Is it enough to just put that egg out there? Do I have to do some kind of action to the egg? And so, as I’m going through the world, that’s how I get my creative ideas. That’s when I’m in the most, I think, creative mindset. I’m just influenced by New York. I’m in New York. It’s so beautiful and filled with art, like we walk down the street and we see graffiti and we see shoppers putting their potato chips in designer ways in their windows and entire shops making beautiful installations with their tires and hubcaps. I just feel like that’s part of me too, like my how I live in New York as that’s my world. So I try to do the similar things with the glass, like as if I were a storefront in New York with food. I try to tell my story here or what I think is relevant. I’m more like a miner. I’m mining for things constantly around me.

So you kind of have that page open, and it’s kind of like a piece of your personality where you’re thinking of ways for storytelling and expression that can always happen through this medium.

It just feels good so like being in that zone, I mean when I really connect, I really feel like I have an idea that is meaningful and just running on all cylinders, that’s when I feel the best, honestly.

AM: Oh, that’s cool. How often would you say that has happened?

DC: I don’t know. That’s more rare. It’s like to really nail it. I think the piece that would be the most iconic piece for me would be the Meat Chandelier that’s in the Corning Museum of Glass. I feel like I nailed it there. Sometimes that gets in the way of finishing a piece though, because once I already feel like I did it, then the assemblage becomes the hardest part, because then the most fun part of thinking I nailed it is over. So now it’s an aesthetic and a construction problem, rather than a conceptual problem. And that’s a different energy process. And it’s more like vacuuming. You have to make sure we’re cleaning the dishes. You have to make sure how to build something. It’s a different kind of energy than creative energy, I think with the installations because there’s a lot of other problems to solve, which aren’t right. The fun icing on the cake part.

AM: So what part would you say is the most fun? Is it thinking of it, making it, or having it up where people can enjoy it?

DC: I think on both ends of the spectrum here, like having it up and having people enjoy it is really satisfying to know that it’s done. And if I get to the point where I’ve actually thought of something, I think I like to have nailed it. That’s the most satisfying. The making part, it’s not as satisfying as those two things, honestly.

AM: Let’s talk about making it. So there, I was with you and your assistant Em making three Forgotten Potatoes at Brooklyn Glass, and there’s a lot to it in setting it up, making it, and constantly working and re-working it. There’s a lot of physical movement. So do you stretch before you start and do you work out certain areas to be more inclined to doing that? Tell me about the athleticism behind it, and also you started out wanting to be an athlete?

DC: I think that was one of the things that clicked for me in being attracted to glass. I wanted to be in a physical medium and I wanted to be in a creative medium. I wanted to express myself through my body, but not as a dancer. So, because that is something that was very intimidating to me, like rhythm and dancing, but I knew I was very physical. What material is going to incorporate that aspect of me is something I was asking without asking. I would say I wasn’t as conscious of it as I am now, but it’s obvious now why I was really attracted to this material. So challenging! It’s just like a feeling that you can’t get anywhere else really to work with glass in a variety of ways.

So [about] the athleticism, I was in high school sports and college sports, and it’s interesting to have an equal part athleticism and creativity with what you are going to do with that and how it is going to manifest. What is that going to make you in your life, and so I guess I found it by mistake. So I do prep and I make sure my body is in condition to work. So I work out in a gym doing strength training. Strength training is the best thing for prepping for this type of activity. I mean, glass can be easy physically, but it depends what you’re really going for here. If you’re doing a large production and making a thousand pieces in a day, that’s going to be physical in one way, versus a really large piece that weighs like 50 pounds. It’s going to be physical in a different way. Or you could just be a hobbyist and just make one thing a day and not really need to prep your body at all. But I don’t work every day. So I don’t want to go in there after not working and not be conditioned or ready to go. So it involves a lot, especially in the heat.

AM: So what gym do you workout in?

DC: I just recently moved to Crunch South Slope. It’s in Brooklyn, two blocks from the studio I’ve been training with a friend of mine, one of my people I work with to make glass. His name’s Alex Kruger. He’s a trainer at Crunch. It’s really cool because how often you get a trainer that’s also a glassblower, so it’s a pretty special situation right - he knows exactly what touch points help you and how I can do the workout and still be functional the next day. We’re doing a lot of higher reps.

AM: What kind of music do you listen to in the studio? Today we heard a lot of Buena Vista Social Club, which we absolutely love! So I was very happy. So what kind of music?

DC: I do like dance disco. I like Purple Disco Machine. They’re good. Groovy. Anything that goes well in hot weather actually does work well in the hot shop. Something with good vibes, something just open. Having good music, I think, is important doing art. I’m also influenced by my studio mate who’s over there. He’s Colombian, and so he does a lot of Latin beats and I like Celia Cruz, that came with that. I think it’s just such a lovely rhythm to work in glass with like and some people come in and try to play things like heavy metal and what not, but it doesn’t really go. It makes the time pass much slower, when you don’t have a good rhythm going.

AM: So what are some of the works you would say you’re most well known for?

DC: I would say there’s three. The one that sort of put me on the map, I think, as an artist was the Meat Chandelier, which is in the Corning Museum Collection. And that started my dialogue with using food and consumables and everyday objects as kind of a vernacular that I talk in with these objects. And that one was specifically sort of a critique of the hot shop that we work in and the patriarchy in general, and this patriarchal world of trying to enter in as somebody other than someone of the patriarchy. So it was a play [on that]. I always like to put a little humor in my work. So I see both sides of this coin on this. Like so many people have helped me of all genders, and so many people have hated me of all genders. So I’m kind of in the middle, but it’s a place where physicality matters and typically people working larger pieces are guys, so it by it’s very nature and we’re talking here specifically, about sculpting glass, not in factories and production in those situations, it’s almost all men.

So, like when I went to Italy, there are no women working on the pipe. By pipe, I mean blowpipe. There’s maybe an assistant helping somebody, but that is really still separated as far as genders go and glass making, outside of the studio glass movement of America and other countries. So this is an art scene, which is different, but it still has that aspect to it. Who gets the jobs? It tends to be the guys, whatever. It’s better in my world because I’m an artist and it’s an art world, but I’m also speaking about the world in general in my work. So that is real.

AM: So what are a couple of the other pieces you would say you’re most well-known for?

DC: Another piece would be the piece I just recently finished last year, which was “Everybody’s Got To Eat,” that is in the public school. It’s one of my bigger works. And I feel like it was sort of a sweet and delicate piece in a way where it’s made for children, and also in a way it’s made for everybody because more than just children go through a public school. People love to eat, as do I, [but] maybe not at the school cafeteria, but it’s 24 fruits and vegetables from around the world representing different worldly cultures. There was a limit and how many I could make due to the financial scope of the project, but I tried to get different regions of the world represented through their fruits and vegetables, including things like New York, an apple, and that represents school and an apple. Then there’s things like an avocado, which represents South America, but also hipsterdom. So these vegetables and fruits have dual meanings sometimes, and who can see themselves in there because they gave another task requirement of being relevant for a hundred years. I mean, it’s a tough one.

AM: I see it. I’m looking at it online now. Wow.. That’s beautiful.

DC: And then it’s really kind of touching to see - you can tell they’re handmade and supposed to be inspiring to people to see that you can make these things with your own two hands in the world of AI and Technology, and have these handmade things in front of students. I think it’s really meaningful to connect them to the planet in some way, in their own bodies. So all that’s in there. And make them feel special that it’s there for them, right?

AM: So it seems like there’s a realistic meets artistic formula that I’m looking at through this project where there’s some surrealism, right? But then some practical vision of what it would look like. And you’re balancing that in the piece.

DC: Yeah, I think that this idea of creating a vernacular is really important to me as an artist - like what is this piece and who are you just putting a dragon fruit out there?

AM: I like that one! Looks very challenging, with all the green around it. Now that I got to see all the intensity it took for the sprouts of the Forgotten Potatoes. Wow, I really like the corn too.

DC: Yeah, that was another challenging one. See, this is a public school project, so the budget wasn’t huge, but it was a decent budget. But I really needed four or five people per piece. That’s a 50-pound corn, and I had a team of three. So for glass, that’s a reasonable-sized team. But for that piece, each corn kernel was brought in a wrap. So one person had to bring all those wraps, whereas I formed all the reps. So we divide into teams, where one person’s bringing the wraps; one person’s on the main blow pipe reheating keeping the piece hot doing all the forming; so if we had another person at least, that would have been helpful. But it really wasn’t in the cards for that project.

AM: See, it’s good you said it was 50 pounds because from looking at the image hung up, I don’t know if it gives the sense someone would know.

DC: Well, to get the texture of getting the corn kernels… I have to solve some technical problems about how I’m going to get all those kernels on there without applying each one individually. So we put on glass wraps that are vertical wraps that are rolled in powder color I divide out with a tool. I then crimp the kernels into it and it creates a personal style I think you can identify that piece kind of as something I made because I choose to work in this style and this level of detail a lot. I could spend the entire day putting every kernel on individually, but I do not need to do I so. One of the maestros I studied with would do that. His demos were excruciatingly long. His name was Pino Signoretto. He was my most influential maestro that I studied with. And he’s so detail-oriented and could work on all different scales. I think he was just an amazing, like, approaching God of Glass, honestly. He could make things other people couldn’t make at the furnace, that is.

AM: So to get the corn, for example, looking that way, did you study corn for a while to look at kernels? And how long would you do that for? Or is this something you would look at really quickly and then put your spin on it?

DC: Oh, I pull up images of corn. I mean, they’re all over my desktop. Like when I’m making a corn, I print them out. I bring in corn to work from. I eat a lot of corn. I just want to know about corn. You live your work. I grew corn in my garden…

AM: So when you see corn now, do you think of corn and that project?

DC: Oh yeah. That’s in my garden. I love corn though. Bi-colored is harder to make as the two colors for each kernel are applied separately.

AM: So tell me about how the Egg series you started. And being in your studio, I saw a whole bunch of Eggs dripping all over. So tell me about the Eggs!

DC: So the Egg pieces, I would say this is the third piece that really defines me as an artist’s third installation. But that happened on TV. That happened on the finale of the Netflix competition show Blown Away. So the prompt there was to make your ultimate art exhibit or something really high there, like something amazing, fantastic, unduplicatable, like just your most amazing piece of art ever! So, with these parameters where we had to fit into that space and you only get so much time to make it, I start to think about some of the pieces I had previously made and what aspects of those concepts I wanted to focus on. So within that, the egg came about because I had the Meat Chandelier in the back of my mind - I knew it couldn’t make a chandelier, but I could use the egg as a metaphor for a female and aspects of what it means to be a female in the world of art into my final finale of the show. This gender inequality, like my feminist side in art, because I’m an artist and a feminist, and I like to make food and glass - so I’m like, how can I make this a meaningful statement? So I started to think of a classic art pedestal, so saying it’s good finally taking over the art world starting to become equal, or the egg not aggressively, but oozing over and in a different way creating a stand in the art world that’s equal to males. Then i also wanted to play on queerness and gender bending and that’s where the frying pan comes in. It’s obviously everything’s glass, but the frying pan is cast iron as very male. But the egg, it was the primary character. Without the egg, there would be no installation.

AM: So what brought you to that show? So you applied or you were asked to join the competition show? What was it like to be on the show and win Blown Away S1 on Netflix?

DC: It was intense to be on it and intense to win it. The structure was where we had to create a new project every three days and it was from a prompt, like creating a floral, or a biological with the human body and moving through space. So they would give us a prompt and then we would have a little bit of time to come up with an answer for that, and we would be in our own hotel rooms doing this. It’s a lot of pressure to have to get on camera the next day and produce. First of all, come up with the idea before you go to bed that night, and then present it the next day in drawings on camera. So it was 10 episodes of forced creativity in a way, but what I learned about myself from that is to actually function really well in that regard when I have a deadline and I have to produce.

AM: Yep. I know what you’re saying. Urgency to Deliver - I’m going to deliver. It’s like a diamond, right? Under pressure, you’re going to produce and maybe not the same every time, but often you’re going to nail it really way and often win!

DC: Yeah. When we first got on there, I had [to look at] space to organize or deal with, like space is a luxury. Time is a luxury and I have it, and I’m like, Oh My God, why am I not more productive when I have all this time to get my Corning residency together? Why am I not doing this in a way that I’ll just get it over with? It lingers. But if you told me tomorrow I’d have to get in there and tell them exactly what to do, I would be up all night figuring it out.

AM: Did you know of anyone else on the show? Were you familiar with any other competitor?

DC: Actually, I only knew one other person, which surprised me.

AM: What was your experience on the show as far as winning? Did your career change after that? What were the effects after being announced the winner?

DC: It was remarkable. Like the effect was kind of like a wave. I got on the top of a wave and it just took me. I wasn’t doing anything. Part of the prize of winning this was that the Corning Museum Store would buy $10,000 worth of my work. But it wasn’t necessarily art. The store sells collectibles. So for the first time in my life, I came up with a line of objects that I could sell. People just kept writing me and asking me. I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t catch up. I couldn’t make enough posts on Instagram. It was a lot! It was life-changing in that I wasn’t able to consistently sell my work like that beforehand. And it changed the work I did to make a living from that point on. So a lot of the work I did prior to that was fabrication for other artists, which I find that extremely demanding psychologically and physically to do. You put a lot of yourself into other people’s work as opposed to your own work. And it could be draining to you making your own work in multiple ways. And then, I also had a lighting line I did with a rep that was called site-specific art, and we would do custom high-end projects.

The show kind of launched during COVID too, and that was an interesting time to have this launch. Then I got opportunities to show in galleries and asked to do things I think I normally wouldn’t have had as a result. It’s not magic, you win a reality tv program and still have to work really hard and try to control my own life in some way in a direction that I want it to go, but there’s a magic to life, right - and what door is going to open next I don’t necessarily know!

I could do that like the project for Mortlock whiskey through Diageo, that was just out of the blue in designing a whiskey pipette. So the brand was Mortlock, and they specifically have design projects going every year. This was the fifth year. So it’s part of their marketing and bringing people together. They found me and asked me if I could make something for their design line and I’m thinking.. oh a glass or something - sure I’d love to make a glass, but they’re like it’s a pipette, [which is] basically an eyedropper. I can make anything in glass, but you want me to make this tiny thing? So I suggested that they had me make the pipette holder too to hold the water as well as a set. It was inspired by the the stills using copper embedding copper in glass, and in the case of the finished product I rolled the hot glass in copper foil and had a violent reaction under the glass that bubbled and turned blue. When it was hot, the copper looked black, but the finished glass ended up being blue. Yeah, it looked very pretty, very elegant 120 sets.

AM: So one of the things you made on this show were Forgotten Potatoes on one of the episodes.. So tell me about the episode. How did you came up with that? And they’re continuing in your studio and people are excited to order and get them?

DC: So that was a botanical-themed challenge. They came up with that challenge because one of the first things you make in glass when you touch it for the first time ever is this thing called a flower. It teaches you how to use the pincers and pull the glass out and it ends up looking something like a very rudimentary flower. I was like thinking about potatoes that sprout, and I really like them because they represent to me, these like unsung powerhouses. It’s not something that’s typically considered beautiful as a potato, yet here it is being this amazing powerhouse! Like, yeah you got your typical beauty which is a flower with its color and all its proportions, but I see the world in a different way - so many other things that could be beautiful and are beautiful and powerful and to me it represented marginalized people as very super powerful people that get disregarded and overlooked. They were represented in the Forgotten Potato and they are often forgotten or overlooked or pushed down and not allowed to shine, but the potato comes through no matter what!

AM: We made three of those together, which was awesome and I saw that you put a lot of effort into getting the exact hues and colors you wanted for the potato. So what’s involved with trying to recreate something that you created before and trying to stay true to the system, rather than creating a new thing as an artist?

DC: Well, the good thing about potatoes and sprouting, they’re endlessly variable - like consistently fascinating - they’re not boring, so it’s not like making a production line in that everyone’s the same. Each one has a little personality and people relate to them in different ways like and people really do relate to the Forgotten Potato or they relate to the metaphor behind the piece heavily. It really gave me a lot of faith in people in a way.

AM: And the sprouts were super cool. It was noted that the sophistication and quality of the sprouts is similar to fine stemware. So it really gets to show off both some of your superb skills and it also gets to relate to and maybe be something the owner gets to flaunt in a way.

DC: That they’re an art piece and has something as fine as stemware, there’s some people that might look to use it as a conversation piece with their guests. It’s challenging to make when you’re opening that up and trying to get it hot as it’s flopping all over the place in the hot box. The hot box is called what we have for our furnaces, and then reheat the glass in glory holes, many are now calling reheating chambers. A challenging part of it with young glass is timing that is really huge here… so you got to know your glass and and what temperature it’s it’s at because it will self-destruct if it gets too cold, and if it’s cold and then goes back into the glory hole which is super hot, it can shatter! In order to become a maestro at this, you have to make a lot of mistakes and work on a lot of different projects to get really good as a sculptor in glass.

AM: How do you generally decide what to make if you’re selling glass pieces?

DC: It’s not just selling, but having a place to put it, because I don’t have enough space in New York to just make stuff. So we thought about that as if I had a beautiful studio in upstate New York that I could bring my work and work on it, I would be creating worlds. I think worlds with these, I would probably make my garden like that. [Presently] there’s a practicality in that there’s the limit of space, and glass is expensive, and part of it is time making it.

AM: What’s the longest time you spent on a project?

DC: Probably one of the ones we mentioned already.. there was also a show I did a couple years ago with the Hannah Traore Gallery that took a couple years to put together. I’m known for it and it was involving mushrooms and their mycelial network that I made in neon so the mushrooms would communicate with trees which I made also in the galaxy called Creatures of Culture That was very popular recently.

AM: Oh, wow, that’s cool.

DC: So I made a tree out of mirrored mosaic, like how it would look like a disco ball. Then I brought in a thousand pounds of glass soil, which was broken up brown chunks of glass from a defunct factory in West Virginia that I brought into the gallery and put on the floor. That also had a queerdelier, it’s like a chandelier, but a queer chandelier because the mushrooms are like non-binary beings - they’re neither plant nor animal, so they have one foot in each category, because they don’t have photosynthesis they get their nutrients through enzymatic digestion.

AM: So if glass could talk back to you, what do you think it would say?

DC: Stop hurting me. That’s when you’re working it too cold. It feels so painful to the glass. You can see it like hates it. Okay. you’re pushing too hard trying to just get every working second out of the heat you just did, and you just go too far it always scars the glass, and it shows you it just went too far! I think it speaks to me most when it’s hot. So when it’s in this molten state. So once the sand and whatnot is heated together. Then it forms an identity, a personality. Yeah.

AM: What would you say the most absurd commission request you ever received was?

DC: Oh, David Letterman, to make glass soap for him. He wanted to use Christmas gifts. Oh I thought this guy is hilarious, because that’s the gift you give somebody when you don’t know what to give them! So he’s creating this glass soap, like when you don’t know what to give someone, you bring a housewarming gift or something, you get soap and candles as two of the biggest things. He was going to use it as a charming novelty to hand out to people saying, I normally would give you soap, but now I’m giving you elevated glass soap. I thought it was hilarious.

He had me make other things too. A tie. OK, then there’s the tie which he still had hanging over there from his son’s prep school tie when he was graduating. So he had me make that - then the tie broke - the tie was broken by someone cleaning the house and he wanted me to do something with the tie’s broken shards to make it into a new sculpture, so I edit those shards into like a big kind of paperweight. He is a fan of glass because he went to an undergraduate school that had glass in Indiana, and he really fell in love with the material. He made a documentary about making that [Editors Note: “Clear Reception” is the Documentary]. Also another thing - so he has a duct tape cell phone holder of different colors on it and it became this big mass of duct tape and plaid and he wanted that reproduced in glass, which I was able to do. He gets very attached to things!

AM: So what’s on your bucket list now?

DC: Well, I’m heading up to the Corning Museum. The next thing is I got asked to be in the show in Venice, so I have to make pieces for that, which I’m calling the project Big Fruit. I’m sticking with fruit. When I was thinking of what to do in Corning, I wanted to turn the fruit project into lighting.

AM: You had won a residency at Corning from the show, right?

DC: That was years ago, but now I applied. So I was two weeks in there, the museum hot shop… they have different hot shops there… I ended up making car parts there, because I was like let’s let me do something that’s not fruits or vegetables... so I made like a car mufflers with big plumes of exhaust coming out of them and hubcaps as the jewelry of the car. So my goal was non-toxic masculinity and that was represented by the car, so glass can transform anything that I thought into something gorgeous and beautiful.

AM: You worked on a cool project with Cake Boss as well?

DC: Oh yeah. That was another TV program. Yeah. Buddy Valastro - Cake versus Glass. His production team found me because he was doing a special for Christmas time or the holidays. It was going to be cake against other materials. And they reached out to me because they wanted to use glass. Glass was one of the mediums. Set design was one of the meat. Legos was one of the mediums. Toys was, I think. So they reached out to me. And they did a four-episode series, which is Buddy versus, and I was the Buddy versus Glass. Okay, I forget the exact prompt now, but it was something about “The Night Before Christmas.” And Buddy did a cake where Santa Claus crashed into a house. He does these huge elaborate installations with armatures underneath -

AM: Yeah they’re crazy! Our jaws were just dropped when we binged a Buddy Versus Duff season recently when we were working around the clock during on a staycation at Coda Williamsburg, ironic no? So much creativity, passion and skill for both of them!

DC: I did a christmas cookie that was out for Santa that got eaten by a mouse. So it was a mouse that ate part of a cookie, and the cookie thought the mouse was in love with it, but the mouse ended up eating the Christmas cookie, so it was not true love. We had two judges. He was on the left side of the stage and I was on the right side of the stage.

AM: So what happened?

DC: I won. He was great [about it].

AM: What are some of your favorite museums and gallery exhibitions?

DC: I like Friedman Benda Gallery. It’s a furniture art gallery. Salon 94. As far as museums go, my preference is the Whitney in New York. The gallery I showed in - Traore gallery. That’s cool. Gotham was doing an ashtray exhibit - they have a gallery in addition to the store where they show some lifestyle things like clothing, and also an art gallery. [Editor’s Note: The Exhibit is called “The Smoking Section.”] It’s a really cool art gallery because they do show things that maybe can’t go anywhere else, like an ashtray show. For that I used a traditional Venetian style goblet that has a dragon in the stem. It’s still there in their store.

AM: What are some of the things you like to do in your downtime when you’re not glass blowing or glass working?

DC: I do yoga okay with Three, because she teaches yoga and I don’t think it would be as fun if she wasn’t teaching. It’s great because that [helps] the flexibility part, especially as you get older, you have to keep limber. And then skiing, we went skiing. I’m a beginning skier, really, but I’m enjoying it. That’s new for me. Then dining and going to movies.

AM: How do you like having a studio office at Brooklyn Glass?

DC: Brooklyn Glass is like a shop that is really devoted to having artists fabricate their work. So there’s two shops near here. One is Urban Glass, which is a non-for-profit artist organization or arts organization. And then there’s this one, which is Brooklyn Glass. I like this one. Well, first of all, I have a studio within this one. And it’s really like a community here that’s a small community that I can rely on to talk ideas over and to help. And so it just feels like more of a community to me than the larger space down the street.

So I like that. And it’s just really focused on professionals here. They have an educational program, but it’s really only at night. So during the day, it’s all professionals working here, which is great. And it’s just a good range of projects coming through that you can see different things being made and different people coming in. They have several departments, including neon, fabrication, hot sculpting or hot blowing, and cold working the finishing area studios where drilling and grinding and cutting of the glass is done. So getting special shapes outside of what you can do in the hot shop. That’s here too. It’s a nice small shop.

AM: It was great making some Forgotten Potatoes together, we look forward to some Eggs & Fruit another time!

IG @dczeey

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDIT | Paul Farkas shot with Sony Alpha |

Read the MAR ISSUE #123 of Athleisure Mag and see MAESTRO OF MAGIC | Deborah Czeresko in mag.

TRAINING TOGETHER | DINO MALVONE

This month we held our Athleisure Mag Summit Series where we invited a select group of our readers and community together to enjoy a class at SaltDrop in the East Village. It was a great way for them to be introduced to their Heated Sculpt 45 class, to meet the founder Dino Malvone who led us through our session, and they were gifted Sticky Be Socks as well as a 3-piece beauty skincare routine from Aeston West.

Avid readers know that last Winter, we included SaltDrop in our feature Athleisure List in our JAN ISSUE #109, and we wanted to find out more about Dino, how he came to the industry, why he wanted to create his own method, and more!

ATHLEISURE MAG: We had the pleasure of having you in Athleisure Mag last year to kick off the year in our feature Athleisure List and we took this class then which was my first introduction to you! How did you come to the world of fitness and what made you want to put your flag in the fitness industry?

DINO MALVONE: Fitness found me before I was looking for it and honestly that’s the only way I think it actually sticks. I wasn’t chasing a career or a brand. I was a person who kept coming back to movement because it was the only thing that made me feel like myself when everything else felt like noise. And then at some point I realized I was spending all this time in spaces that didn’t fully see me or the people around me and I thought someone should do something about that. So I did. I don’t think I chose fitness as much as I just stopped pretending I wasn’t already in it.

AM: What led to you wanting to create SaltDrop?

DM: My time with Barre3 was genuinely formative. I learned so much there, about how to lead a room, how to lead a team, and what it means to build something that people actually want to come back to. I have real gratitude for that chapter.

But at some point I started feeling the edges of the formula and I wanted to reach beyond them. I wanted to add jumping sequences, choreography that had a little more life to it, more effervescence. Things that didn’t fit inside what Barre3 was built to be and honestly shouldn’t have. That wasn’t the right container for those ideas. So I made a decision that I think a lot of people think about, but not everyone actually does. I decided to put my energy into building my own dream instead of continuing to build someone else’s. SaltDrop was what happened when I finally took that seriously.

AM: I love how you call out and encourage modifications. Why is it important to you to have this as part of your philosophy when you’re leading a class?

DM: Because the fitness industry has a savior complex and I’m not interested in participating in it. The idea that an instructor pushing you past your limits is somehow doing you a favor is something I actively reject. Your body is not a project that I get credit for fixing. When I offer a modification I’m not being easy on you. I’m being honest with you. I’m saying I trust you to know yourself and I’m not going to perform toughness at your expense. That’s a different kind of rigor and I think people feel the difference immediately.

AM: How would you describe SaltDrop as a fitness concept?

DM: It’s the antidote to fitness culture. Which I know sounds like something everyone says, but I actually mean it structurally. We are not optimizing you. We are not tracking your output or gamifying your progress or making you feel like you need to earn your place in the room. We’re just creating conditions for you to actually connect to your body and to the people around you. That’s it. And it turns out that’s pretty rare which says a lot about where the industry is right now.

AM: For those who have not taken your classes in person or virtually, what kinds of classes do you offer?

DM: We have three formats right now. Signature is our OG, the one that started everything and still hits the way it always has. Then we have Sculpt and Sculpt Heated, both are no cardio, and the difference is exactly what it sounds like because Sculpt Heated is at 90 degrees and that room does something to you. We are also currently building out a Flow class and a Strength class which I’m excited about because they expand what SaltDrop can be for people depending on what they need on any given day. And all of it is being developed inside something much bigger because we are in the middle of a major rebrand right now. So everything coming is being built with a lot of intention and a very clear vision of where this is all going. It’s a good time to be paying attention.

AM: How do you go about deciding the kinds of classes you will offer and do you foresee adding something new to the lineup?

DM: I don’t really look at what’s trending, because by the time something is trending it’s already starting to die. I look at what’s missing. What conversation is nobody having yet in this space. What does the person who feels unseen by the wellness industry actually need right now. That’s where I want to be. And yes there is always something new taking shape. I’m not someone who gets comfortable easily and SaltDrop reflects that. We grow when I grow and I’m always growing so.

AM: For those that may not have gone as far in their fitness journey as they wanted, what is something you would say to encourage them to get on the mat?

DM: I’d say stop treating your body like it owes you a different version of itself before you’ll be kind to it. That negotiation you’re having with yourself, the one where you’ll start when you lose the weight or have more time or feel more motivated, that’s not a plan. That’s a way of staying stuck that feels responsible. The mat is not waiting for you to deserve it. It’s just waiting for you. Show up as you are and let the rest figure itself out, because it will.

AM: What do you want people to walk away feeling after taking one of your classes?

DM: Like they remembered something about themselves they had been forgetting. That’s the only way I know how to put it. Not accomplished, not exhausted, not like they checked a box. Like something that had gone a little quiet in them got loud again for a minute. That’s what movement does when it’s done right, and that’s what I’m always chasing in a room.

AM: What can you tell us about the SaltDrop community?

DM: They ruin you for other fitness communities honestly. Once you’ve been around people who actually show up for each other and I mean in real life not just in the comments, you can’t really go back to the transactional version of this. I’ve watched people meet at SaltDrop and become each other’s emergency contacts. I’ve watched people move through genuinely hard seasons of their lives and have this community hold them. That doesn’t come from a good class. That comes from something much harder to manufacture and much more worth protecting.

AM: Recently, you were part of a multi-day event at Canyon Ranch Lennox. What can you tell us about this?

DM: Canyon Ranch Lenox is one of those places that makes you realize how loud your regular life actually is. There’s a stillness there that isn’t forced. It just exists and you settle into it pretty quickly. Being invited to teach in that environment was meaningful to me on a personal level, because the people who come to Canyon Ranch are not there to be seen. They’re there to actually do the work. That kind of room brings out something different in me as a teacher and honestly as a person. I left feeling clearer than I had in a while.

AM: Thankfully, we’re in the Spring and looking forward to Summer. Are there any upcoming projects or things that SaltDrop will be doing that we should know about?

DM: I’m in a very creative season right now personally and professionally and SaltDrop is going to reflect that. There are collaborations coming that I think will surprise people in the best way, and the podcast is taking shape in a way that feels really right. I’m not going to give everything away because I think the element of surprise is underrated. But I’ll say this, if you’ve been paying attention to what SaltDrop is building toward, what comes next is going to make sense in a very satisfying way.

AM: You’re coming up on your 4th year with your studio! What are 3 lessons that you have learned?

DM: One, the community is the whole thing. Not a feature, not a selling point, the actual thing. If you get that right the rest follows. Two, sustainability is not a compromise. I used to think that slowing down or resting was somehow at odds with ambition, and I was wrong about that in a way that cost me. You cannot build something lasting from a place of depletion, full stop. Three, your taste is your business model. Stop trying to appeal to everyone. The more specific and true you are to your actual vision the more powerfully the right people find you. The diluted version of your idea helps nobody.

AM: You launched a podcast, I Hear You Babe. Tell me about it and why you wanted to start it?

DM: It started because I kept having the same conversations over and over with people in my classes. About relationships, about their jobs, about this feeling of living someone else’s life instead of their own. And at some point I thought, what if we just put that in a room together. The format is simple and I think that’s why it works. Every week I give listeners a prompt, something specific enough to actually unlock a real story. Things like tell me the moment you realized you’d been chasing someone else’s version of success. Or tell me about the comment that was small but stayed with you. And people send me emails. Long ones, short ones, funny ones, devastating ones. I read them on air and I respond in real time, not from a script, just the way you would if a friend was telling you something that mattered. And I always go first. I talk about what’s actually going on with me that week, building SaltDrop, navigating New York, whatever is real. Because I think you have to earn the vulnerability before you ask for it from anyone else. That feels important to me. The audience is mostly women, the girliepops as I call them, and they are incredibly engaged. They write back. They send photos. They say hi to my cats. It has genuinely become its own community and I think that’s because the show doesn’t try to fix anything. It just tries to make people feel less alone in whatever they’re going through. That’s the whole job.

AM: You also have a project called I Fear You Babe. Tell us about that.

DM: Most true crime makes the victim the opening act. You get thirty seconds of who they were and then it’s all killer, all investigation, all spectacle. And I sat with that for a long time before I understood why it bothered me so much. If you don’t know who Linda Dewey was, not her case, her Tuesday mornings, her job, the way she probably moved through the world, then the justice part is just plot. It’s entertainment dressed up as something important. I Fear You Babe is built around the opposite idea entirely.

We spend real time with who these people were before everything happened. Because I genuinely believe that is the only way any of it matters.

We do two episodes a week. Thursdays are the deep dives, the full portrait, the story behind the story. Mondays are specifically about what broke that week in active cases, not recaps, not whatever went viral, but things that actually moved. Because the news cycle does not wait and neither do the people still waiting for answers. I built this show because I was tired of true crime that forgets the whole point.

AM: When you are not working on your business or prepping for your podcast, how do you take time for yourself?

DM: I protect my mornings like they are sacred because they are. That quiet before everything starts is the most honest part of my day and I will not negotiate on it. Outside of that, it’s long dinners with people who actually make me laugh, music that I’m a little too emotionally invested in, and coming home to Rocco and Vito who have never once been impressed by anything I’ve accomplished and I genuinely think that’s good for me.

IG @thesaltdrop

@dinomalvone

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | Dino Malvone

Read the MAR ISSUE #123 of Athleisure Mag and see TRAINING TOGETHER | Dino Malvone in mag.

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Read the MAR ISSUE #123 of Athleisure Mag and see 9R3DCARP3T in mag.

GOLDEN HAPPINESS | ERIN JACKSON + JORDAN STOLZ

Although the Olympics have completed this cycle, for the Winter Games 2026, we enjoyed sitting down with Erin Jackson Team USA Olympic Speedskating Gold Medalist to talk about her love of the sport, how she got into it, competing at Milan-Cortina and more.

ATHLEISURE MAG: When did you fall in love with speed skating, and what do you love about this sport?

ERIN JACKSON: I actually loved this sport for as long as I can remember. You know, some of my earliest memories of skating were just up and down my driveway and the little plastic skates. So it started out as just a hobby for me. I didn’t have any dreams of being competitive in the sport. I just started doing it because I loved it. So that was my intro which was through roller skating and then roller skating, led me to inline skating, and then inline skating led me to ice skating. So, yeah, it was just kind, I guess, a very natural progression, but it did just start with the love of the sport and the love of the hobby I guess!

AM: I mean, there are so many things you could have done! Why did you decide that figure skating wasn’t the thing, but speed skating was?

EJ: I actually did go that route first, so I did what’s called artistic skating. And that’s like figure skating, but also on roller skates. Who knows? That that could have been where I ended up, but my coaches in artistic skating they actually moved away to pursue figure skating on ice for their daughters. Their daughters ended up competing in Sochi, I believe.

AM: Wow!

EJ: So who knows? Maybe I could have gone that route, too? But when they moved, I just let that be the end of figure skating.

AM: Well, what does an average week look like when it comes to training for upcoming competitions?

EJ: So we train six days a week, most days, it’s two training sessions. One of those days, we’ll have three training sessions one of those days, we’ll have one training session, but we’re training most the time. It’s kind of like a full-time job, so we’ll have a morning session for probably 3 hours or so, and then rest in the afternoon for lunch and then come back and have another session later in the day.

Normally skating once a day, and then the other session can be, you know, like, bike intervals, or, you know, cardio or weightlifting or something like that.

AM: We were just going to ask about three workouts that you do to optimize for this particular sport? You kind of just answered it. Our minds are still wrapping around six days a week. I mean, clearly, that is what you have to do.

So this past Olympics marks your third, where you were competing in the 500 meter and the 1000 meter? What does it mean to you to be able to compete on such a global stage?

EJ: It’s a really cool honor, I guess, like just being part of the Olympics and just being able to be part of this really large thing where people from all over the world are coming to do the thing that they devote their lives to. We all just come here and do it together. It’s just a really cool community aspect, you know, part of this large community of Olympians and Team USA. And it’s, yeah, I feel like that’s the best feeling of it, just like doing it all together.

AM: What did you love most about your experience this year, and you know, being in the Olympics, and are you thinking ahead to 2030?

EJ: Yeah, I am thinking of 2030, yeah, I couldn’t imagine stopping the train at this point. I definitely want to keep going with all the progress I’ve made this season, and I really want to carry that forward. Some of my best memories from this games were a toss-up between watching my teammates this time around, because for most of them, it was their first Olympics. It’s getting to see all the amazing firsts that they were experiencing and then also watching other Team USA events, like with athletes from those sports. You know, they can give a lot of insight and behind the scenes info about the scoring and sometimes even the drama in the sport. So, yeah, that was a really cool thing too.

AM: Well, you are part of Happiness as The Real Gold Hershey Campaign, which is so fun to see that and to get to see other aspects of you while you’re talking. Why did you want to be involved in it? And what does happiness mean to you?

EJ: Yeah, the Happiness is The Real Gold Campaign, I feel like was a really important thing to get out there in a really important message, because it can just like remind athletes and just people in general that the people in your lives who love you and care about you like, they’re gonna love you, no matter what, because what they really want for you is happiness.

AM: Yeah.

EJ: Your achievements are just kind of a bonus for that. I feel like it was a really great message and one that was really heartfelt and emotional campaign, especially with having our families involved. I was really happy to be a part of it.

IG @speedyj

After chatting with Erin, we caught up with her Team USA Speedskater, Jordan Stolz. We wanted to hear about his passion, a successful Winter Olympics, and more!

ATHLEISURE MAG: How did you come to the sport of speedskating and for those that are not familiar with it, how would you describe it to them?

JORDAN STOLZ: I would describe it as a sport where you are constantly trying to keep progressing and a sport that is very satisfying when you improve. The feeling of being able to go fast on turns is a feeling that I can’t get anywhere else! I can’t get it in a car, I can’t do it on a mountain on a bike – it’s something that is very surreal and I think that people get addicted to it!

I first got into it because of Apolo Ohno (G2, S2, B4) back in 2010, and I was watching him compete and it was the first Olympics that I had ever watched in my life. I was just really into it and it caught my eye with the way that he was passing people. It was like a showman and I asked my parents if I could start skating. and I actually started with my sister on our frozen pond in our backyard. We shoveled a track and ever since then, I have been doing pretty good.

AM: What are workouts that you find beneficial for speedskating?

JS: I would say a lot of cycling. The number 1 thing that changed for me is when I spent a lot more time on a bike. The weight room too – just building up your squats. You have to have power on the ice. You want to combine those two, but you don’t want to go too far with either one. You don’t want to be this cyclist that weighs 130lbs, but you also don’t want to be a body builder and then you would be super slow on the ice – you’d have too much weight. It’s kind of factoring all of that in to work with the mechanics of skating and the technique. I have found that to be the most beneficial for me.

AM: What were the Opening Ceremonies like for you and what does it mean to you to compete on such a global stage?

JS: It means a lot to compete for Team USA on the Olympics as a global stage and to win 3 medals, the highest medal count. That means a lot, not just for me, but for speedskating itself and the whole country. It’s great that I can bring more awareness to speedskating, as it’s such a cool sport and I’m glad to be able to do that.

I didn’t walk the Opening Ceremonies, but I loved watching it on TV when I was in the Village.

AM: When it’s gameday, do anything that gets you into the mindset to compete?

JS: I try to relax a lot and not to think too much about the races. I want to be able to get into the zone before getting into the rink. Before that, I like to chit chat with people, sit in bed and watch some reels, and then I can get out there and be ready!

AM: You had an amazing Winter Games 2026! You won a Gold in the 500 M, and then another one in the 1,000 M - the first American male to do it in the same Olympics since 1980, and you got Silver in the 1,500 - you also made 2 World Records - what does it feel like to leave the Games with those accolades?

JS: It means a lot especially to have my name attached to Eric Heiden (5G) and it means a lot to be thought of as a successful speedskater in Olympic history for the US. I hope that I can continue to progress and do better going into 2030 and this is just one of those stepping stones. When I went to Beijing, I didn’t win any medals there and then 4 years later, I trained a lot and the World Cup had a lot of experiences and then I was able to come here to the Olympics in a very prepared way! Who knows what can happen over the next 4 years? Hopefully something very similar and I am feeling very good about the results that I have had this entire season and not just the ones that took place at the Olympics. I’ve been skating some fast times and had great track records.

AM: In your downtime in Milan, how did you take time for yourself to reset between competitions?

JS: It was just – there wasn’t a lot to do in the Village, so it was about laying in bed and trying to relax and focus.

AM: You partnered with Hershey’s For the Happiness Campaign. Why did you want to partner with them and what does Happiness is the Real Gold mean to you?

JS: I wanted to partner with them because they are a huge household name company. Having that name tied around you at the Winter Olympics is really special. It’s the highest achievement that you can have as a speed skater. First of all going to the Olympics, and then being able to win a Gold medal, with the name Hershey’s behind you – that just means a lot, especially how they support my family in general. It’s authentic and I feel that they really put the truth behind the slogan that Happiness is The Real Gold. They are 100% right about that!

AM: Post Olympics, are there any projects or upcoming competitions we should know about?

JS: I have the World Champions coming up – the World Sprints and the World All Arounds – it’s a combination race. It’s kind of like the 2nd thing to the Olympics if you are considering the Netherlands view. They view it super seriously here. I think it’s really cool and I will compete in both and try to win both of them. It will be fun and really hard! Everyone wants to hear if I will be doing anything in cycling and that’s probably not going to happen because I will be focused on skating.

IG @stolz_jordan_

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDIT | Hershey’s

Read the MAR ISSUE #123 of Athleisure Mag and see GOLDEN HAPPINESS | Erin Jackson + Jordan Stolz in mag.