Great Coordinated Looks for Dance and Cheer

Clothing wholesalers are trotting out the latest designs and innovations for their 2010 lines. Here are some of the looks we liked at this fall’s ISS show, a prominent style show for the decorated apparel industry. A lot of the new looks are updated hoodies, now with matching footwear to boot!

Coordinating pants in wild animal prints

Although not new, we were impressed with the colors and fabrics available with matching boxer pants, hoodies, and their coordinated linings and appliqués. If you’re tired of the same ole’ T-shirts, these looks can excite dance and cheer teams, sports teams, and sorority/fraternity organizations. Plaids remain popular, with wild life designs such as zebra and giraffe patterns new this year.

Sherpa Hoodies with Sheep Wool Texture Lining

Another new take on sweatshirts is to line them with an insulated, nubby fabric and call them “sherpa” hoodies.  It extends the life of your sweatshirts from fall into winter.

Sweatshirts and long-sleeve shirts with a textured “waffle knit” are widespread.  The “burn out” or “slub” look remains extremely popular.  This year’s twist is to combine waffle knit texture with a burn out weave, which gives you a look like below. 

Waffle Weave with Burn Out

 Although we used a two-tone sample to show up better on the web, we really recommend a tone on tone look if you want  to imprint a custom logo. slogan,  or motif on a burn out pattern.

Care to guess what colors are most popular for tees?  You guessed it…black is the new black. As has been the case for several years, t-shirt vendors report that around 50% of sales are black, primarily because it makes colorful designs “pop”.  According to Ron Droddy with Marathon America in Carrollton, TX, royal blue, red, and gold remain the most common thread colors.  He is seeing growing interest in metallic thread colors, however.  In our next post, we’ll talk about some of the new cap designs that were showcased.