The teaser worked as planned. On Monday, Haney is officially announcing that she’s back at Outdoor Voices as founder, partner and co-owner, alongside the team at Consortium, led by managing partner Cory Baker, who first got in touch before it was announced last year that his company bought Outdoor Voices for an undisclosed sum. “I thought that was quite cool, because he wasn’t asking me necessarily to rejoin, but he wanted to put it on my radar because he very much saw me as a core part of the Outdoor Voices vision,” Haney says. She’s been working with Consortium on returning to OV since last August.
She doesn’t consider it a relaunch, as the brand has been operating for the five years she was gone, though as a shell of its former self. All of its stores shuttered last year, and the branding and product assortment have felt frozen in time, heavy on past hits like the Exercise Dress, Rectrek Pants and compression co-ords. Today, that changes, with refreshed branding designed with Emmett Shine, founder of Pattern Brands, responsible for the recognisable look and feel of brands like Hims, Harry’s and Recess.
The collection will be available to shop on 5 August. I’m eager to know what Haney’s take on athleticwear looks like 12 years on, in an age where Gen Z is foregoing leggings and opting for looser silhouettes to work out in.
“The vision is the same,” Haney says. Her goal, which she returns to a few times during our interview, is that she wants Outdoor Voices to be the top recreation brand in the world. She avoids the word ‘athleisure’, which followed OV since its launch days — she never liked it. “It feels like a space that’s still so wide open, and we can step back up into that.” While her philosophy hasn’t changed (“I always come back to thinking about this as a uniform for doing things”), she says the new pieces are more fashion forward, and that the brand will start leaning into more natural materials in addition to its technical fabrics, in line with greater demand for fewer synthetics. For continuity, she rehired former creative director Tiffany Wilkinson to lead on design.
Customers will find updated versions of key pieces like the Court Skort and the Exercise Dress, including one, the Energy Dress, that Haney is particularly excited about. It’s a more sophisticated take on a workout dress, with contrast stitching and an A-line cut. A fitted cardigan and an oversized button down — pink with blue pinstripes, which Haney is wearing as we chat — reach into new corners of the closet. “We’ve pushed the boundaries in being a bit bold on what she would wear,” Haney says of the OV customer. Low-cut spandex shorts paired with tube tops feel like a fresh direction; unlike the coordinating sets of OV past, nothing is too matchy-matchy.