Leggings feel like they’ve always existed, but yoga pants as a distinct, purpose-built category are barely 25 years old. The garment’s real story starts with a fiber invented for an entirely different purpose, decades before anyone rolled out a mat in it. Here’s how spandex became a studio staple.

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1959: the invention that made it possible

Spandex — an anagram of “expands” — was invented in 1959 by chemist Joseph Shivers after nearly a decade of research. The fiber could stretch up to several times its length and spring back to its original shape, a property no fabric on the market had at the time. It reshaped fashion broadly before it ever became specific to fitness wear, showing up first in foundation garments and swimwear.

The 1970s and 80s: leggings enter fitness culture

Stretch nylon-spandex blends made legwear sleeker and more durable through the 1970s, and the aerobics boom of the 1980s — home workout videos, gym culture, visible exercise fashion — put stretch leggings on millions of people for the first time as everyday exercise wear rather than a niche garment.

Late 1990s: the yoga pant becomes its own category

By the 1990s, stretch leggings were familiar for general exercise, but a garment engineered specifically for yoga didn’t yet exist. That changed when Chip Wilson, an entrepreneur with a background in surf and snowboard apparel, took a yoga class in Vancouver and noticed students practicing in cotton clothing poorly suited to sweat and stretch. He founded Lululemon in 1998 and launched performance leggings made from a proprietary nylon-Lycra blend, effectively creating the yoga pant as its own distinct product category rather than a variant of general activewear.

Where Njálla fits in

That history is why leggings today are judged on a very specific set of properties — stretch, recovery, breathability — that trace directly back to spandex’s original invention and the fitness culture that adopted it. Our leggings sit in that same lineage, built on a recycled polyester-spandex blend, but with the addition of hand-drawn prints dyed directly into the fabric rather than left plain, which is where the garment’s practical history meets ours. See the current collection in our shop.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was spandex invented?

Spandex was invented in 1959 by chemist Joseph Shivers after almost a decade of research; the name is an anagram of “expands,” referring to the fiber’s ability to stretch to several times its original length and recover its shape.

Who invented the modern yoga pant?

Chip Wilson founded Lululemon in 1998 after noticing yoga students practicing in cotton clothing that wasn’t suited to sweat and stretch. His performance leggings, made from a proprietary nylon-Lycra blend, are widely credited with creating yoga pants as a distinct product category.

Were leggings used for exercise before yoga pants existed?

Yes — stretch nylon-spandex leggings became common exercise wear during the aerobics boom of the 1980s, well before a garment was engineered and marketed specifically for yoga in the late 1990s.

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