I Spoke With Literary Sport!
About how running is one part of a full life, styling transitional pieces, Toronto and more...
I’ve been keen to speak with Literary Sport since their buzzy debut this fall at New York Fashion Week. Their launch caused an immediate stir among the fashion folks I follow here and on Instagram, and they’ve been racking up coverage ever since, including in The New York Times, Lauren Sherman’s Line Sheet, and Vogue (that’s pretty much as good a PR trifecta an emerging brand might wish for).
I was intrigued, as much by their erudite positioning (they post more poetry and art on Instagram than workout shots) as by their elegant and elevated approach to running apparel, which is just as often styled with high heels as sneakers.
With prices in the Satisfy-sphere and fabrics sourced from Japan, Italy, and France, I was curious about their strategy and where they saw themselves falling in the current running ecosystem. So, I reached out to find out more and I was pleased to get the chance to speak with their Creative and Design Director, Jackie McKeown. We caught up last week via Zoom as Jackie was putting the finishing touches on their upcoming Spring ‘25 launch. I loved this conversation as it touched on so many of the themes I’ve been exploring the last few months in terms of the nichification of running fashion and voids in the market, especially in terms of brands led by women and ones catering to a more mature perspective.
Buckle up, it’s a long read, but a juicy one.
Brand Chat vol.6: Literary Sport
In conversation with Jackie McKeown, Creative and Design Director
The first question I like to ask is about origin stories. How did you get started in sports? And do you remember what you wore?
I remember being in senior kindergarten going into grade one and I badly wanted to run on the cross-country team. To the point that the teachers were like, “You can't.” Because they would train around the neighborhood. And they said, “You're too small. We don't allow it until grade three.” But I had two older brothers that went to my elementary school. So as long as I ran with them, I was allowed to run cross country.
I just needed to run. It’s a funny thing to think about – a little person needing to run –but I’ve always loved running.
That was my first foray into sports. I was also a Highland dancer from the age of four till I was about 15. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Highland dancing, but it's quite athletic.
I did Irish Step, so am somewhat familiar.
I did Irish dancing after, when I was 15, because I was so injured from Highland dancing and the turnout. Anyway, my mom has these stories from when I competed. Sometimes some of the local high schools would host Highland dance competitions and they would fall on the same day that I had a soccer game at the same facility. And she remembers just stripping my kilt off and me, throwing on my jersey as I ran down to go play my indoor soccer game in the same venue.
When I went into high school, I started playing rugby. I then went on to play at the University of Toronto. I was on varsity, we won nationals. So it was just this evolving experience with sport, but the constant was running because that was always the fitness element of the sport that I was doing.
It was something that was always part of my life. What I find interesting with running, in terms of the garment that you're mentioning, is I remember getting this pair of Umbro England soccer shorts when I was in college.
I still have them. They're these tiny, little, baby-blue England team shorts from the early nineties. I panicked last year, I thought I lost them, but I’ve always kept them with me.
I remember getting them when I was in Scotland for a dancing competition and needed shorts. They became this kind of thing because they were so short, perfectly short. I started running in them when I was in high school and university. I loved running in a vintage gray tee and these little England shorts.
I think it’s interesting to think about when we talk about sport and running now, there is such a focus on the technicality of the garments. I think for me, that wasn't as crucial. I think you can go out and you can run in anything. It might help at an elite level, but it’s not necessarily crucial for the activity.
Switching to today and to Literary Sport, I’m interested in how you joined the brand. Can you talk about the founders’ vision and what you’re bringing to the table?
My partner [Fran Miller, Co-Creative Director of Literary Sport] and I work in the fashion space. My partner has a skincare line, but we’ve also done a lot of creative direction and shoots for brands. The co-founder, Deirdre [Matthews], has been a longtime friend of ours.
She and Mark [Bechara] had this concept brewing during COVID, they wanted to work on a running-focused brand together. They brought us on to consult on how to get things moving, brand direction, and brand identity.
And as that evolved, we started working on it in a larger capacity. So for us, it’s very much been about the identity of the brand, wanting to have this throughline between art and sport, which I think is often missing. That's something very reflective of their feelings towards sport but also ours.
And so it felt like a very easy working environment. We understood and knew how to bring their vision to life in terms of, the visual identity, the design language, and, the overall presence of the brand.
And you’re all based in Toronto, right?
Yeah, we're all in Toronto.
Is there anything about the running or fitness culture in Toronto that inspired this art meets sport approach? Or the creative community there?
The running community is fairly small. There are run clubs within the neighborhoods. I run with a couple. Some of them skew younger and there are others with more creative folks, it sort of depends on the different communities that you run with.
I would say that for us there was this missing … maturity to running and to running attire for us. When we go to these run clubs a friend of mine, Justin, who often collaborates with us, we noticed that there was this missing link. There are these niche, more fashion-focused or technical running brands – Satisfy is quite technical. But aesthetically, we didn't feel as drawn to them.
Prior to launching, I was wearing a lot of these different brands that were leaning into a more fashion space like District Vision and Satisfy because the quality of the fabric was quite nice. But I found that I didn't feel like myself in a lot of the garments.
I was choosing the more subtle pieces, but it didn't feel like there was something that felt like a seamless transition with my taste outside of sport. So I think that was a real driver in terms of inspiration for us.
It segues nicely into the next question I had about designing for performance and style. For context, I worked at Tracksmith for seven years. And so when I was there, early on in 2015-16, we would sometimes get labeled as “a fashion brand” and the performance aspect was undervalued as a result.
And now, in the last five years or so, it seems like a lot of people have woken up to the idea that style and performance in running can go hand in hand, where we had to hammer home the authenticity. “We are runners. We know what we're doing. We're thinking about your needs.”
I’m curious about how you've approached that, having seen the ecosystem and how it’s shifted, but also still noticing that there was a void.
When we consider any of the technical elements of the garment, it's more out of necessity as opposed to doing it just to do it.
There are brands doing fantastic things in terms of tech. SOAR has fantastic fabrics. They're doing amazing pieces, like really lightweight marathon shorts, but that doesn't reflect our customer. It doesn't reflect us.
I run half marathons. I run quite frequently. But for me, I'm not always in training for some sort of epic event. I don't always want to be in tiny split shorts. And it's not the climate here.
For Fall ‘25, we have a Merino lined tight coming out that I've been running in this winter that’s fantastic. We're not going overboard to make a big fuss that we're adding these technical elements. It's just it's there because that's what you need. We don't need to hype up a story about something being super techie. I think it's something that we consider in every piece we make.
We have a jacket coming that's waterproof and it's got things that I find are quite necessary, but it’s not visibly technical, which is not our person. So that's how we approach it. “Does it still feel like it would seamlessly work into a wardrobe?”
We were just in Paris shooting our campaign and I brought our jacket with me and I was able to wear that a lot of the days just for travel. The garment has to be transitional. It has to feel like I can wear it in other settings. The current season run jacket was a big favorite in early fall. It's easy. It's super light so you can just roll it up into a suitcase. So those are the things we think about more so than trying to over-complicate a garment so you have six pockets for gels when that's maybe not our customer. That's how we approach it.
I was interviewing someone who has lived all around the world and they mentioned that being seen out in activewear in Europe is considered very American. But it sounds like what you're offering here is the ability to have a piece that works in an active setting, but it's going to fit into maybe a more elevated wardrobe or way of styling yourself without maybe signaling “Hey, I just went for a run.”
Exactly. That's the goal. And with our friends who live in New York and other cities, we've talked about that specifically, to understand how they've been using the pieces and get that feedback.
One of our friends is a big runner, but he's also a designer in New York and quite fashionable. He was just letting us know that the vest that we put out for Fall ‘24 is a daily wear for him. He said, “Sometimes I do go for a run and then I find myself grabbing coffee or whatever and I'm actually proud to wear this.”
He’ll often just layer it under his coat in the winter just as an added piece when he’s not running. So it's nice to hear that it is translating to people as garments that feel transitional enough that they can work in with your, everyday pieces. And I think that's a big thing for us because it's expensive.
It's expensive when you are sourcing fabrics at a high level. We do work with mills in Japan, Italy, and France. And so the fabric is quite expensive. But for us, that was a choice that we wanted to make. That's where we weren't going to compromise. So if it is a higher price point, I don't want to spend $200 on a t-shirt if there are massive logos or holes in it or things that are not wearable outside of sport. Maybe for some people that is their daily wear and that is a sensible purchase. For us, it was just finding pieces that felt like they were worth your money and you could get more out of them.
I’d love to hear more about the sources of inspiration you draw from outside of sports.
I'm a stylist. I’m always inspired by day-to-day people watching, seeing silhouettes that are unexpected together. I think it's a little bit selfish, but it's quite personal. It's things that I feel like I'm missing or that I would like to wear.
So lot of it comes from these places, referencing the past, but also referencing more current ideas. There's a lot of love for brands like Prada Sport and Miu Miu of the past. These things were technical and quite wearable in a fashion way.
Color comes from anything. Sometimes I'll just see a random wall and it’s like,
”Oh, I love this color of blue or green.” That was something that came in for Spring ‘25. It's got more color than we've had in this previous collection. There was a bit more inspiration about that idea when snow is melting and finally you can run and feel a little bit nicer being outside again. There's this subtle brightness to the colors in spring that feels a little bit fresher. It’s just thinking about the season and about what inspires running at those different times of the year.
We talked about performance a little bit and we touched on this idea of a middle ground where performance means being able to run and feel comfortable while running, but also being able to do a host of other things. I'd love to just hear more about what dressing to perform means to you. How do you want people to feel?
I don't want to feel restricted. We've chosen a lot of fabrics, especially our running shorts, that are quite lightweight. It’s things that just move with you seamlessly. We updated our singlet fabric for spring and it’s paper thin. It feels amazing. I was testing that when I was in Austin for TRE in November. I brought some of the spring pieces with me, which was really nice to get to test them in a warmer environment.
For us, it’s about things that feel great. They feel nice to put on, like Merinos that climatize your body. We try not to use as many synthetics, especially in tops, because I don't think they feel amazing. We try to find natural fibers that work best for us and that feel the nicest. That's what we go off.
A lot of the fabrics have many technical qualities. Our wools have coolmax treatments in them. We have DWR. They are functional fabrics. But at the same time, it’s very much about touch and feel. We spend a lot of time with that
I've always been drawn to the idea of looser-fitting running apparel. I've never been a big fan of tight-fitting stuff. Maybe it was because I was a rower, we had to wear a lot of spandex. It’s nice to see that pendulum shifting back to this idea that you can perform in clothing that doesn't have to be right up against your skin.
Totally. And of course, compression makes sense. It’s still important in the mix, especially in the winter, obviously. It's nice to have options. I had a challenge where men's running gear wouldn’t fit me correctly but women's gear wasn’t quite what I wanted to wear. There was this missing middle ground of things that were a little bit more androgynous. We’re still catering our women's fits to a woman's body. But they're a little bit looser, a little less fitted, a little less tailored in certain areas. It’s just a more enjoyable feeling, something a little bit looser, a little bit easier, a little bit more relaxed.
Knowing that you come from a styling background, that's such an interesting point of view to bring to building a brand. I’m curious about how that has informed your approach to putting the collections together.
I often see the bigger picture in terms of the pieces and how I want them to work together. I think there's a starting point: how can this encompass a bit of a wardrobe for someone? I approach it that way, trying to fill in gaps. Even with some of the upcoming things, we're not introducing tons of styles, but sometimes we're just updating or tweaking fits of things based on, how it would not only feel better, but also look better together as a total look.
So we do try to make sure the pieces complement each other and feel like they can be complementary outside of sport or with some of the more relaxed pieces like hoodies. We try to make sure the color palettes and everything work together and feel like a cohesive collection.
You mentioned going to The Running Event. And I was intrigued to see you launch at New York Fashion Week. I’m interested in that approach in terms of catering to a fashion audience and a running audience. What was the thinking behind launching there?
It’s interesting because I don't think it was even an intentional strategy. We've always had a vision for the brand that ends up living in this world that's more inspired by art and color palettes of art and things like that.
So for us, we knew Jacqueline Sullivan already. We had visited the gallery before and were in love with that space. When we were speaking about shooting our lookbook and campaign in New York, we were like “Oh, we've got to shoot it at Jacqueline Sullivan’s space because she's got so many beautiful pieces in her permanent collection that would really lend to our collection.”
When we decided to shoot there, we said, “You know what? We should do our launch event here too. And we should make this a whole story around the space.”
I think that the audience that I feel I can connect to, are people living in the art or fashion space, where running is a part of their life, but maybe it's not the defining part. You can absolutely love running. And we can geek out about running, but it doesn't need to be the only thing that we speak about. I think you said it before, that there can be this kind of running snobbery. “You don't understand it. You're not a real runner.”
I don't think that I need to put running at the forefront of everything, but it is something that is a constant in my life. I think that people that are in that space, probably understand it in the same sense as us. You can be interested in this without it defining you. And have other things that support who you are too.
I love that. I think it's way more relevant to my life now. I'm 38 and I just had a kid. When I was at Tracksmith, single, just running all the time, I was way more enmeshed in the culture. And now I find myself quite removed from the core culture. Even though I run, I think the last two weeks, I ran every single day.
I think one thing that's cool about the nichification of running is that you have these brands that cater to different mindsets and ways of engaging with the sport, which is beautiful. Hopefully, it welcomes more people in because they have more avenues to connect with it.
And that's absolutely the goal for us. That was the idea, creating something that felt slightly older. I'm also 38. I think for people in our age range or slightly older – the founders are slightly older – there’s been something that’s been missing for them, something that didn't feel super technical or super trendy. Maybe they didn't feel as involved in these niche things happening in running now. So that was something that felt true to us and is what we wanted to bring out. And I do think there's a lot of people that can relate.
I think that’s always the best way to start a brand – with a deep personal truth – because that's how you create emotion.
Anyway! Almost done. Since you mentioned running in Toronto, could you walk me through your perfect run in the city?
Almost every Sunday morning, a couple of my friends usually meet at my house. And we have our little four-person run crew. We often do a similar route, especially in the winter. It's quite beautiful through High Park, which, I won't say it's our Central Park, but it’s a big, beautiful park.
I live in Roncesvalles, which is the west end, close to High Park. We're usually running about a 10k. We take the streets there and we enter from the bottom of the park, which is quite beautiful, through the gates, and then we usually take this nice path that goes through the forest, all the way up to the top, and then we cut through down by this beautiful pond, which in the winter we'll often see people skating on.
It’s just it's a nice Sunday morning, especially if the sun's out, even if it's freezing, it's a beautiful route. Then we end up down on the lake shore and then we'll take the lake shore across back over the bridge. And then we just grab a coffee and stroll back to my place.
So that's usually my ideal run. It's a nice way to make yourself get out in the winter when you have a few people to do it with.
Ok, one last quick thing. Did you know that the Olympics used to include literary competitions? I found that out while researching this interview. So Literary Sport has a storied history (forgive the pun!).
Amazing! Thank you so much for sharing that.
Quick Thoughts
Things That Caught My Eye or Ire…
Lilac is Trending (as Pinterest predicted!): Spotted this color across a few new spring releases. From Bandit, the newcomer Mile Off and Hoka.
Word on the street is that the market for Newbury Street pop-up space is quite tight (and quite $$$) for the Boston Marathon. Will be interesting to see who makes the investment.
IDK why Coco Gauff was at the Oscars (I will not stay up to watch and find out.) But I LOVE this custom look Miu Miu made for her. A nice little win for New Balance too, since Miu Miu is a collaborator. Winning on so many levels. Next up, Met Gala?
I really appreciate Literary Sport’s commitment to creating pieces that integrate into our existing wardrobes. Saving my pennies for those Fall ‘25 merino-lined tights!
One of my fav Canadian brands!