Ok so is the Champion brand of clothing actually considered "stylish" now a days?

[Imzadi]

I think a few years ago Champion worked hard to raise their status with more quality, colors & styles, especially now that athleisure wear is in. Maybe they partnered up with colleges to make their college logo clothes which raised their status. It's not of the status of say, Nike, Adidas, or Lululemon. But, I don't think it's considered a "poor" item anymore.

OP, I understand how you feel. Stuff from childhood can go deep and feelings of shame can accidentally get retriggered at odd moments, especially if we aren't mentally prepared for them ahead of time. If you had decided to get the Champion sweats knowing ahead of time that they still had a bad reputation, that's different than walking around mentally & emotionally unprepared. Because you made an informed choice. Being told by others that old adage that "Sticks & stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me, " is a crock of ****. It didn't work back then for many of us. It may not work now, depending on the trigger.

 

[Minnesota!]

Champion was always cool around here, still remains. It is all my younger son requested for one Christmas. I would say he has at least 7 Champion shirts. Of which he wore none today, for first day of school, He wore a plain black Hanes one.

 

[cabanafrau]

I've noticed photos of celebrities wearing Champion recently, so it must be "in". All I could think was, I wonder how much they marked up the prices now? I remember it being affordable, decently made basics, but I guess it must be having its day in the sun.

A few years back Old Spice was suddenly trendy. Is that still a thing?

 

[#1hoosierfan]

Not sure about Champion. My boys mostly wear Adidas. I do know they don't really want Under Armour clothes anymore. I wonder if that is going "out."

 

[tvguy]

I'm surprised to hear Champion is a big deal too. I grew up near an outlet store (we called it the reject store) in the 70's so a big part of my wardrobe was Champion rejects. Every kid in town could say the same thing. It was just where you went for t shirts, hoodies, sweatpants, etc.

I remember once we were on a vacation and my sister had a jacket with a random team name that she literally didn't even know how to pronounce. Someone asked her about it and was really surprised we had no knowledge of the team, what sport they played etc. Both of us were confused "It's a shirt. Why would we know what the words on it have to do with?" We were really surprised by it. It was normal in our town to have shirts with random weird sometimes misspelled words on them. It definitely made us think twice about wearing them when we left for college!

Never been to a Champion outlet store, but my perception of "outlet" stores was like you describe, "rejected " products. That is NOT the case anymore it seems. Outlet stores tend only to carry a limited inventory of the most popular first quality items. And at prices above what normal retailers sell those items for. My wife went into the Levi Outlet store and found they carried very few of the various kinds of Levis. Staff told her they only carry the top selling types, and they had never even heard of the version my wife was looking for.