et cetera, et cetera 英文人行道: “athleisure,”to tone, athletic, intoning, burrow into

2014年12月24日星期三

“athleisure,”to tone, athletic, intoning, burrow into

"Athleisure": It's a thing, and it's making its way to the office.

Retailers rush to tap Millennial 'athleisure' market

As active-wear sales rise nationwide , traditional apparel companies...

USATODAY.COM

The latest buzzword in fashion is “athleisure,” one of those made-up terms that are so ridiculously nonsensical as to be perfectly descriptive. That is, designers and retailers are obsessed with clothes that fit a somewhat broad category of being appropriate for either athletic or leisure pursuits, or both. We’re talking about anything from designer leggings of the Lululemon variety to cashmere sweats to layering pieces to absurdly fancy (and expensive) gym clothes. This is a topic I explored in depth in the Look Smart column of the August issue of InStyle (on newsstands now) and took note of the trend of retailers opening new sport and athleisure stores—including Without Walls from Urban Outfitters and Lou & Grey, the popular loungewear collection from Loft—in recent months.

It would be silly to suggest that a couple of hours of walking around gave me miraculous insight into a poem like “Peter Quince at the Clavier” — yet I did come to understand something simple but crucial about Stevens. What moved me about the walk, in the end, was that he had chosen to walk at all. In a car-mad country that prides itself in being perpetually in motion, the poet made a clear and conscious decision to stop, to slow down, to burrow into his imagination. And walking had opened his eyes and ears to a place that was full of surprises. As Stevens himself put it in a poem:

“It is like a region full of intonings./It is Hartford seen in a purple light.”

The athletic shoe giant Reebok claims you can. The new EasyTone walking shoe, a provocative new marketing campaign says, leaves leg and buttock muscles better toned than regular walking shoes.
Consumers are buying it — literally. Officials from Reebok, a unit of Adidas, say the EasyTone is the company’s most successful new product in at least five years.

Firm Body, No Workout Required?

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Muscle-activating shoes claim to tone legs and buttocks while you walk. But do they bring results you can see?

tone

v., toned, ton·ing, tones. v.tr.

To give a particular tone or inflection to.
To soften or change the color of (a painting or photographic negative, for example).
To sound monotonously; intone.
To make firmer or stronger. Often used with up: exercises that tone up the body.

v.intr.