Interview with (maternity) sportswear brand Active Truth
The past month I have the luck to collaborate with Active Truth, a great activewear brand that supplies amazing general, maternity and postnatal activewear. My clients have been loving their maternity leggings and feeding crop tops during their workouts. Have a read and get to know the brand and their products better.
Who is the person behind active truth?
Active Truth was founded by Stevie Angel and Nadia Tucker. We met when we each moved to Brisbane on the same day almost 10 years ago and were neighbours in a newly-built duplex home. We quickly became friends over walks with our prams and baby playdates. We weren’t looking to go into business or develop a working partnership. But once when recognised the need for a brand like Active Truth it was a case of “someone needs to do this – why not us?”. So after a year of planning and research, we launched Active Truth as a side project while working our day jobs with 100 pairs of tights.
How old is active truth?
We just celebrated our 4th birthday!
Name 3 things that active truth stands for.
Inclusivity. Active Truth was born out of our frustrations buying activewear online. We would order products that looked beautiful on models in photos but didn’t perform in real-life on bodies without model proportions. Our early research, and subsequent business growth, confirmed our belief that women who were pregnant or wore larger sizes were being underserved by the activewear market. We believed that women deserved better. We are inclusive not only in our sizes offered, but in everything we do.
Community. We have an amazing community of customers and fans who support us and our mission to celebrate all women. As an online business this connection is built primarily through social media. Only seeing one type of woman on social media is both demoralising and unattainable for most women and leaves us feeling bad about ourselves. So, we show our products on a diverse range of women, including a lot of customer photos, and we never Photoshop our models. We encourage women to be active on their terms in a way that feels right for them and their bodies. We talk to our community about the things that they’re interested in and the challenges they are facing. We don't just sell tights!
Quality. We are obsessive about fit and function. With every new product we create we want to know that it's solving a problem, and that it's an item that our customers will love to wear again and again.
What is your selling point for your maternity active wear and feeding crop tops?
Our focus is on comfort and support. Being pregnant can be uncomfortable enough without clothes that need to be constantly adjusted. Compression tights are amazing for general wear when your ligaments soften and you lose stability causing back, hip and pelvic pain. For women suffering from medical conditions like varicose veins and symphysis pubis dysfunction our tights are a game-changer. Our customers report the same easing of symptoms as they get wearing medical-grade tights, but without the price tag (and the medical 'look').
Why the interest in maternity gear? How can my prenatal and postnatal clients benefit from active truth activewear.
The feedback from our customers is that our Mama Tights provide serious support and comfort to growing bellies at a time when nothing seems to fit properly. Your body is going through so many changes during this time and women love being able to continue staying active without resorting to wearing their husband's shorts or saggy trackpants like we did! Because they make you look and feel good, and stay in great condition wear after wear, we often have women coming back to buy multiple pairs and integrate them into their daily maternity outfits, not just wearing them to workout.
How do you balance the performance of materials such as sweat-wicking or quick drying with both fashion and functionality?
A product must perform well through a workout if we are to consider releasing it, but the great thing is we don't have to trade one for the other. There are so many beautiful performance fabrics out there, and we always love a printed tight to mix up our legwear lineup!
What’s your go to exercise?
I love to lift weights, and generally do group training so I have someone telling me what to do when I'm working out half-asleep at 5am!