Wilm Apparel is a Canadian-made workout wear company. Founder Morgan Wig sources fabric from British Columbia, manufactures in Ontario and stores inventory in her Saskatoon basement.Erin Crooks Photography
Vancouver designer Katie Quinn launched her athleisure label, Downtown Betty, in 2009, while preparing for yoga training in India where the dress code required covered arms and legs.
“It was going to be 45 degrees and I didn’t want to wear plastic leggings in the heat,” she recalls.
Quinn sourced knit cotton from a Vancouver fabric store and sewed a comfortable T-shirt dress – one that her friends noticed and promptly asked to buy. She ended up selling six before setting off on her travels.
Seventeen years later, she’s working out of the new Downtown Betty flagship store on West 4th Avenue in Kitsilano, the neighbourhood where global athleisure brand lululemon got its start. Quinn’s store hosts sound baths and yoga classes, an extension of her everyday “no-tox” lifestyle. The brand’s tagline is “Doing it naturally”.
“You work out to stay healthy,” she says. “So why would you want your workout wear to be anything other than good for you too?”
Quinn is among the growing cohort of Canadian entrepreneurs developing activewear made primarily from plant-derived fibres, designed to deliver the fit, stretch and comfort that is typically achieved by materials such as spandex and elastane, which are derived from petroleum-based chemicals.
Downtown Betty leggings and tops are made with 95 per cent organic cotton and 5 per cent Lycra. For comparison, lululemon’s popular Align leggings contain 81 per cent nylon and 19 per cent elastane.
A longtime yogi, Quinn used to pitch the environmental benefits of natural fibres at yoga festivals. She would advertise using posters stating her clothing contained 95-per-cent less plastic than conventional activewear.
None of it made an impact, she says, until she filmed herself being wrapped in plastic food wrap and posted it on Instagram.
That provocative visual connected her brand to a growing conversation about microplastics and their potential effects on human health, including concerns about hormone disruption.
“Think about it,” she says. “When we’re covering our endocrine glands in plastic… What’s the long-term impact on our health?”
“You work out to stay healthy,” says Quinn (pictured below). “So why would you want your workout wear to be anything other than good for you too?”Selina Gartner/Mindfully Creative Co.
The marketing is resonating with consumers. Since taking this new approach, sales have more than doubled from 2025 to 2026, according to Quinn.
In Saskatoon, Morgan Wig was asking similar questions. An accountant and avid runner and weightlifter, she began questioning where her workout clothes came from and what they were made of. Finding few Canadian-made alternatives that met her preferences, she decided to develop her own.
Wig enrolled in Factory45, an incubator for sustainable fashion entrepreneurs, and launched Wilm Apparel in March 2025. Today, she sources fabric from British Columbia, manufactures in Ontario and stores inventory in her Saskatoon basement.
Wig’s fabrics, like Quinn’s, carry OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certification, which tests textiles for harmful substances. Her tops contain 66 per cent plant-derived lyocell; her leggings, 65 per cent plant-derived viscose, blended with nylon and spandex for stretch. She admits the leggings run heavy, better suited to low-impact workouts, and is in the process of testing a lighter fabric from Spain.
To date, Wig estimates she’s manufactured roughly 100 units of each style and sold about half. Tank tops and T-shirts, priced between $45 and $75, have been her bestsellers.
For Toronto-based mom of two Alma Zorman, who has lived with eczema since adolescence, the difference is tangible. She says synthetic workout clothes can irritate her skin, while WILM’s softer fabrics have made Pilates and spin workouts more comfortable.
The science, however, is less clear-cut. University of Alberta textile scientist Dr. Patricia Dolez isn’t particularly concerned about polyester and nylon fibres coming into contact with our skin. The polymers they’re made from are chemically stable, she explains. Her questions lie more with the dyes, additives and other small molecules that may not be firmly bound within the fibres, although she says she has no evidence that they enter the skin.
Then there’s the question of environmental impact. Despite being made from natural matter, turning plant-derived materials into fabric can involve chemicals and solvents. On the other hand, synthetics shed persistent plastic microfibres.
With her athleisure label Downtown Betty, Vancouver designer Katie Quinn aims to replace synthetics with natural fibres as much as possible, but without losing the qualities consumers expect from performance clothing.Selina Gartner/Mindfully Creative Co.
Kelly Drennan, founding executive director of Toronto-based Fashion Takes Action, identifies recycled polyester as yet another challenge. Often made from plastic bottles as opposed to discarded clothing, the material can be difficult to recycle a second time, particularly when blended with elastane.
“Natural does not automatically mean sustainable, and recycled does not automatically mean circular,” Drennan says.
Ultimately, a garment’s environmental impact depends on its entire life cycle. That makes transparency about the process of making clothing even more important. Clothing labels identify fibre content, but typically reveal little about the dyes and chemical finishes used in manufacturing.
Drennan says consumers shouldn’t need a chemistry degree to make informed choices. The responsibility for better disclosure also lies with the industry.
Neither Quinn nor Wig has eliminated synthetics entirely. Both are experimenting with how much can be replaced without sacrificing the qualities consumers expect from performance clothing.
“I choose my health and the earth’s wellbeing over perfectionism every day,” Quinn says.