Running kit that sparks joy

Viral caps, frilly sports socks and a caterpillar named Gaia

Hello from the Subway in New York, which is where I began writing this week’s newsletter. I’m en route to La Cabra on Lafayette, then to browse the shops before my flight. It’s been a very busy but fulfilling week with work. This morning, I laid-in until 7am, ran 12km around Central Park, had eggs for breakfast, stocked up on bottles of Electrolit and bought my nephews a cap each. So far, it feels like a pretty typical New York weekend and while none of that is particularly interesting, it brought me a lot of joy.

Leaning into joy is my vibe right now. And something else that brought me a lot of pleasure this week was how many friends and industry heads I spoke to or saw during my trip — most of whom I connected to through running. This community is really very small, and there’s an intimacy that can be found even in major cities like New York. Across the weekend, I gathered groups of friends who I met either at run club or through work-related running stuff; I took a few choice work meetings and wound up organising to go for a run. It’s special, the way running can bring people together. It’s affirmed me in unexpected ways these past few weeks.

In this newsletter, I have exclusive interviews spotlighting three brands that each have a uniquely joyful take on running wear. (Apologies that this is belated; jet lag from an uncomfortable red eye got me good.)

As ever, please leave a like, a comment or share SALTY with someone else who might enjoy it. Thank you for being here.

Alex Zono’s wonderful whimsy goes viral

Alex Zono’s “I Dig Running” caps remind me in a way of Where’s Wally — those amusing children’s cartoon books where Wally is hidden among hyper-populated pages, detailing dozens of people doing all sorts of fun things. (Where’s Waldo for you Americans.) Except with Zono’s colourful caps, I’m spotting them in real-time.

At the Diamond League in London in June, I spotted a stranger wearing a Zono cap (beige and brown with playful red stitching) across the sea of ten hundred heads; a friend of mine in Milwaukee recently posted a photo of himself wearing one on Instagram; Substacker Cole Townsend of Running Supply wore his during a live podcast recording with Drew Hartman. I’ve spotted them at backyard ultras (Go One More) and The Speed Project; in the pub in Hackney and in the mountains of Chamonix. The caps are catnip for Instagram, with oversized colourful letting that is very distinctive. They have a huge fanbase in Seoul.

“Who would have thought I could quit my job to sell trucker hats?” says Zono, who I finally caught up with over Zoom a couple of months ago. “I have friends who say to me, ‘Dude, I see people in your hat every single day. They always send me photos.”

Zono’s £50 caps are a niche product but they have become an “if you know” item — the ultimate symbol of being in the weeds of running culture. Where just a few years ago, a kit from Satisfy might have been the sign of running flex, now it’s a cap with childlike embroidery from a micro designer based in Cape Town. Crucially, they aren’t (yet) overexposed; it’s more “one influential person wearing it at a big running event,” says Zono. This adds to the cap’s credibility. They also aren’t overly available; Zono has stockists in South Korea (four), Australia (two), mainland Europe (three) and UK (one: Knees Up in Hackney). Plus his own e-commerce site. On Ebay, they’re being resold for around $230.

Why does he think they’re hitting the spot? “‘I Dig Running’ as a phrase is something people can identify with,” says Zono, who launched the caps last year. “I think of them like a band T-shirt but for running. It’s for people who are just into the sport.” The caps, which chime a lighthearted mood, give permission for people to not be ‘training’. They don’t look like a serious product; they’re expressive and individualistic. Run for fun, not performance, they seem to say. It’s a different message from recent years, with more and more people aiming for super fast race times; it’s not ‘Running Cult Member’ or ‘Just Do It’ either.

Casual run clubs have become so overpopulated with slick, black race day garb that the whimsical nature of Zono’s aesthetic and organic materiality are a breath of fresh air. “I wanted to create running clothes that had a sense of sentimental attachment, as if your granny made it,” he says. The scrappy stitching gives it that sense of hand feel that is a tactile switch-up from slick performance wear; it looks and feels more intimate, and like something that will only get better with age. The caps, while breathable and performance-based, are a Noughties-era shape with a huge, square peak. The opposite of short-brimmed, low-profile racing caps.

“We focus on a different element of running,” he says. “We don’t actually have people running on our Instagram feed. It’s about the romance of it, the friendship of it.” Ultimately, it’s for people who just love running with their mates. Joy, and then some.

Say hello to Gaia, the Unna x Hoka caterpillar

“We are not a performance company,” says John-Ruben Holtback, founder of the Stockholm-based Unna. It’s an interesting take for a running brand, but it’s one that is working. Unna has built its reputation in kit that is wearable beyond the sport. Think: long-sleeved, breton-striped baggy tops, roomy trousers (appropriately called the “Everywhere” pants) and heavier cotton T-shirts printed with cute motifs. Its windbreakers feature a half-zip fastening, which have the effect of being a bit smarter and easily layered underneath a blazer or bomber jacket.

Its new collaboration with Hoka follows a similar trajectory. Releasing globally this week, the Unna x Hoka Speedgoat 4 brings a more playful sensibility to Hoka’s credentials. The shoes, which sold out on pre-release within a few minutes last weekend, are decorated with detachable rubber caterpillars, similar to what a child might play with in nursery school. “The caterpillar serves as a reminder that the process can be slow and beautiful, and that we can all develop at our own pace,” says Holtback. The cute creature is called Gaia, named after the illustrator. It reminds me of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and it features on Unna’s limited-edition T-shirts.

“The industry has long been about performance, speed and personal bests, but Unna focuses on running as a lifestyle, which includes mental wellbeing and joy,” says Holtback, who established Unna in 2020; he discovered running through struggles with his own mental health. “A lot of brands are just trying to become “the next Satisfy”, he says, referring to the Parisian brand’s impressive growth in terms of scale and influence. “It’s about finding your niche. Ours is that we want people to feel better about themselves.” It’s not about finishing in first place, but “finishing in a good place.”

“I’ve run consistently for over 10 years, usually up to 30km a week and among my friends I’m known as the runner,” says Holtback. “Now, with social media, I sometimes feel like I don’t count as a ‘real runner’, which is absurd. Running has gotten too serious.”

Unna is a small brand by industry standards, with around 25 stockists globally. But that’s not to say it’s not influential; in May, Unna called out Asics for imitating its Finish in a Good Place campaign that featured a Samoyed dog wearing a bandana; Asics’ dog also wore a neckerchief, and its campaign was about mental health awareness. To an extent, the drama online brought additional visibility to Unna. “John-Ruben’s personal journey [with running] is the genesis of the label… which [resonates with and] moves consumers,” says Thomas Cykana, head of special projects at Hoka. “Runners want to stand out and feel seen as much as anyone.”

The fresh perspective played out in the launch event in Hackney last week. Held in partnership with Knees Up, Unna and Hoka took over Max Rocha’s ever-cool Cafe Cecilia for a dinner — I was supposed to be hosting it, but ended up needing to be in New York for work. A community breakfast in Knees Up followed the morning. Both spaces were decorated with wild flowers; the tables featured packets of caterpillar-illustrated seeds to plant. Signature Scandinavian breakfasts were served, with chunky sourdough, smears of butter and boiled eggs. The events felt creative directed in a way that was holistic, with high-level effort; many running events these days feel lazy in format, and samey in mood. This was not.

The collaboration will be available at top tier retailers like Dover Street Market, plus Knees Up in Hackney, The Loop in Austin, KA-YO in Stockholm and Beaker in Seoul. “They’re a mix of retro and contemporary, so people can wear the two colours with blue jeans or black dress pants,” says Holtback. “We’ve put ‘Good Place’ on the toe box, to remind people what really matters.”

Legitimately cute running socks

“Omg I love your socks.” I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said this to me recently. The ones in question are white and frilly — my current go-to — and they are made from performance material by the Dubai-based women’s running brand Mile Off. I posted a picture of them on Instagram stories a few weeks back, and it was one of the most liked posts I’d done for a long time. “Swiftly added to the basket,” replied one friend. I love mine so much, I’ve just ordered another two pairs.

In my experience, there are very few products in running today that actually get this level of interaction from women. That’s because so much of the kit on the women’s market isn’t designed to tap into emotion in the same way that Satisfy’s band tees do for guys. What’s the girly version?

These frilly socks are the answer. So simple in theory, and not exactly a status product at £12.50 a pair, but they hit that sweet spot of nostalgia that doesn’t otherwise exist within running or in sports more broadly. They tap into the school girl aesthetic we grew up with. There’s a jolt of recognition almost, which (I found) personally feeds a gut instinct to buy. They’re familiar in a way that few other bits of sports kit actually are.

They also better reflect the type of cutesy socks many of us choose to wear today when we aren’t running. Personally, I love a lettuce trimmed sock with preppy loafers; my favourite pair are ribbed and grey. I wear them with my Paraboot horsebit slip-ons. Mile Off’s performance socks are effectively a replica but for sport.

There’s a few other brands doing frilly sports socks right now, which is an indicator that sports brands are mindful of this consumer want — that women want products that directly speak to them. My gym sells lettuce-edge pilates grip socks; Adidas, Stance, Nike and Puma all offer versions in cotton that are more suited to the gym. I personally don’t really like any of those ones. It’s a hard sell to just put a frill on what is otherwise a normal athletic gym sock, in a chunky material. But at least they’re trying.

Go deeper, and the concept gets interesting. Lots of brands design sports clothing that enables the wearer to feel like themselves when they are performing – that was the founding reason for brands like Satisfy and District Vision. But the reality for women is that most sports kits still feel and look like sports kits; they don’t really reflect what we’d ordinarily wear in our day to day. These socks incite emotion because they actually do look like something we’re familiar with. They’re similar to what already fills our underwear drawers.

When I think about MileOff’s running socks, I instantly return to this very memorable anecdote about The Spice Girls, written by Caity Weaver for The New York Times.

“When, through the nighttime murk of the Amazon River, an electric eel locates a feeder fish, what happens next is instantaneous: A jolt of electricity surges through the fish’s nerves. Its muscles contract simultaneously, and it is transformed into a living, floating statue.

This is roughly the same reaction that women born between Labor Day 1985 and New Year’s Eve 1991, approximately, exhibit when exposed to the opening seconds of the Spice Girls’ debut single “Wannabe.””

Evocative, and then some. To all the ladies who wore frilly socks and listened to The Spice Girls in the Nineties – you know…