The Latest Trend in Your Work Wardrobe Stinks

Performance fabrics are moving out of the gym and into everyday clothes. Some men say that stinks.

The fabrics, usually a blend of polyester, spandex and other man-made fibres, have been a mainstay in workout gear for their sweat-wicking properties. Now apparel makers are using them for polo shirts, button-ups and suits. But a work day or wedding lasts a lot longer than a workout, giving the materials time to trap odours, cause breakouts and make you sweatier.

Tim Connon, a life insurance agent in Palmer, Tenn., got tired of adding a cup of baking soda to the wash to remove the mildew smell from his polyester-blend polo shirts, and eventually tossed them out. “It was ridiculous to have to take that extra step when the shirts shouldn’t smell in the first place,” he said.

Connon now wears only 100% cotton shirts, but said they are hard to find and more expensive. They also have to be ironed. “The performance shirts don’t wrinkle, but I couldn’t stand the smell and the itchiness of those fabrics,” the 31-year-old said.

Synthetic fibres repel water, which helps sweat evaporate but allows oil secretions from our bodies to build up on the fabric and trap odors, according to Renae Fossum, a senior director and research fellow at Procter & Gamble.

P&G has upgraded its detergents and introduced new products like Downy Rinse & Refresh, a fabric enhancer that works in the rinse cycle to strip away odours and residue that builds up on synthetic clothes. “We are trying to help consumers understand these issues are not in their head,” said Sammy Wang, a P&G senior scientist who specialises in fabric care.

Polyester is no stranger to friction. The fibre got its start in the 1930s lab of DuPont chemist Wallace Carothers. After Carothers got sidetracked by the discovery of nylon, British scientists picked up the thread and developed the first polyester fibre during World War II. DuPont bought the U.S. rights in 1946.

In the following decades, the fabric elbowed aside natural fibres like cotton, silk, linen and wool, thanks to its lower costs and easy care—you could throw it in the washing machine and let it drip-dry.

It was also suffocating, at least in its earlier forms. Wearing a 1970s polyester leisure suit was like “walking around in a Hefty bag,” said Alan Spielvogel, director of technical services at the National Cleaners Association, a dry cleaners trade group.

Clothing makers eventually added breathability, stretch, waterproofing and stain resistance. As athleisure took hold, polyester took off. Polyester surpassed cotton in 2002 and now outsells all other fibres, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

Covid further fuelled polyester’s growth as people got used to wearing more comfortable clothes while stuck at home.

Although women have adopted performance fabrics for dressier attire, men have been the primary driver of demand because they tend to put a higher value on features like stain and wrinkle resistance, said Kristen Classi-Zummo, an apparel analyst at market research firm Circana.

Dermatologists say that with the popularity of these fabrics, they are seeing a jump in “sweat acne,” which is caused by a yeast that lives on our skin that invades our pores when we perspire.

Erum Ilyas, a dermatologist in King of Prussia, Pa., said sweat acne is more prevalent with performance fabrics in casual or work attire than workout clothes. “When you work out, you usually rinse off afterward,” she said. “If you are wearing a shirt for 8 to 12 hours, you are stuck in that fabric for longer stretches of time.”

She tells patients to try using Head & Shoulders shampoo as a body wash to degrease the skin.

Tyler Cenname, the co-founder of a furniture company, purposely chose a dress shirt made of performance fabric to wear to a Las Vegas wedding in August because he thought it would keep him cooler.

“I actually sweated more than if I was wearing a cotton shirt,” the 24-year-old said. “And I broke out in a rash.”

Zach Klempf, the founder of an automotive software company, bought a moisture-wicking suit to keep him dry when presenting to clients and working trade show booths. He hadn’t counted on the suit absorbing cigar smoke during industry cocktail hours.

“I can’t wear it anymore, because the smell is so off-putting,” said the 32-year-old San Francisco resident. He’s gone back to wool suits.

Some performance-fabric fans say the odours are a small price to pay for the added comfort and absence of armpit stains. To combat the stink factor, some brands treat the fabrics with antimicrobial finishes.

That coating can wear off, according to Tony Anzovino, chief sourcing and merchandising officer at Haggar Clothing, which uses performance fabrics in 70% of its products. Instead, Haggar uses a type of polyester fiber that is spun into a longer yarn called a filament that makes it harder for microbes to attach.

Jonathan Poston, a 48-year-old consultant, who lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., wonders if we’re asking too much of our clothes. “In the tech world we call it feature creep,” he said. “The same thing is happening with clothes. They have to tick all these boxes.” He only wears 100% cotton shirts.

“As someone who has to wear a shirt for 14 hours a day, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask my clothes to do a lot,” said Ben Perkins, the co-founder of &Collar, a men’s clothing brand that uses performance fabrics. Nevertheless, Perkins plans to introduce a cotton-blend shirt after customers said they wanted one.

“You need to serve the synthetic majority and the cotton minority,” he said.

Developer efforts to convert emptying office towers into residential buildings have largely gone nowhere. That may be finally changing.

The prospect of transforming unused office space into much-needed housing seemed a logical way to resolve both issues. But few conversions moved forward because the cost of acquiring even an aging office building remained too high for the economics to pencil out.

Now that office vacancy has reached record levels, sellers are willing to take what they can. That has caused values to plunge for nothing-special buildings in second-rate locations, making the numbers on many of those properties now viable for conversions.

Seventy-three U.S. conversion projects have been completed this year, slightly up from 63 in 2023, according to real-estate services firm CBRE Group. But another 309 projects are planned or under way with about three-quarters of them office to residential. In all, about 38,000 units are in the works, CBRE said.

“The pipeline keeps replenishing itself,” said Julie Whelan , CBRE’s senior vice president of research.

In the first six months of this year, half of the $1.12 billion in Manhattan office-building purchases were by developers planning conversion projects, according to Ariel Property Advisors.

While New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are leading the way, conversions also are popping up in Cincinnati, Phoenix, Houston and Dallas. A venture of General Motors and Bedrock announced Monday a sweeping redevelopment of Detroit’s famed Renaissance Center that includes converting one of its office buildings into apartments and a hotel.

In Cleveland, 12% of its total office inventory is either undergoing conversions or is planned for conversion. Many projects there are clustered around the city’s 10-acre Public Square. The former transit hub went through a $50 million upgrade about 10 years ago, adding fountains, an amphitheater and green paths.

“You end up with so much space that you paid so little for, that you can create amenities that you would never build if you were doing new construction,” said Daniel Neidich, chief executive of Dune Real Estate Partners, a private-equity firm that has teamed up with developer TF Cornerstone to invest $1 billion on about 20 conversion projects throughout the U.S. in the next three years.

Conversions won’t solve the office crisis, or make much of a dent in the U.S. housing shortage . And many obsolete office buildings don’t work as conversion projects because their floors are too big or due to other design issues. The 71 million square feet of conversions that are planned or under way only account for 1.7% of U.S. office inventory, CBRE said.

But city planners believe that conversions will play an important part in revitalising depressed business districts, which have been hollowed out by weak return-to-office rates in many places.

And developers are starting to find ways around longstanding obstacles in larger buildings. A venture led by GFP Real Estate is installing two light wells in a Manhattan office-conversion project at 25 Water St. to ensure that all the apartments will get sufficient light and air.

Cities such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Calgary, Alberta, have started to roll out new subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives to boost conversions.

The projects are breathing new life into iconic properties that no longer work as office buildings. The Flatiron Building in New York will be redeveloped into condominiums. In Cincinnati, the owner of the Union Central Life Insurance Building is converting it into more than 280 units of housing with a rooftop pool, health club and commercial space.

In the first couple of years of the pandemic, office building owners were able to hold on to their properties because of government assistance and because tenants continued to pay rent under long-term leases.

As leases matured and demand remained anaemic, landlords began to capitulate and dump buildings at enormous discounts to peak values. In Washington, D.C., for example, Post Brothers last year paid about $66 million for 2100 M Street, which had sold for as much as $150 million in 2007.

Washington, D.C., has been particularly hard hit by the office downturn because the federal government has been especially permissive in allowing employees to work from home .

“We’re able to make it work as a conversion because it was no longer priced as though it could be repositioned as office,” said Matt Pestronk , Post’s president and co-founder.

Increasingly, more deals are taking place behind the scenes as converters reach deals with creditors to buy debt on troubled office buildings and then push out the owners. GFP Real Estate reduced costs of its $240 million conversion of 25 Water Street by buying the debt at a discount and cutting deals with tenants to exit the building before their leases matured.

One of the first projects planned by the venture of Dune and TF Cornerstone likely will be the Wanamaker Building in Philadelphia. TF Cornerstone just purchased the debt on the office space in the building and is in the process of taking title.

“The banks are foreclosing and doing short sales,” said Neidich, Dune’s CEO. “There’s a ton of it going on.”

In Washington, D.C., a conversion of the old Peace Corps headquarters building near Dupont Circle is 70% leased just four months after opening, said developer Gary Cohen . Rents are higher than expected.

“If that’s the way to get people downtown, that’s what we have to do,” Cohen said.

Not all developers agree that the economics of conversions work, even at today’s low prices. Miki Naftali , who has converted more than five New York properties over the years, said he has been very actively looking at conversion candidates but hasn’t yet found a deal that works financially.

One of the issues facing converters is that even if an office building is dying, it often has a few existing tenants who would need to be relocated. Some buildings would need atriums to ensure that all the apartments have sufficient light and air.

“When you start to add everything up, if your costs get close to new construction, that’s when you get to the point that it doesn’t make financial sense,” Naftali said.

Some landlords are including clauses in leases that give them the right to evict tenants to make room for a major conversion. Others are keeping a small ownership stake when they sell buildings so that they can learn the conversion process for future buildings.

“The world is looking at these assets in a different way,” said developer William Rudin , whose company decided to learn the conversion process by keeping a stake in 55 Broad Street, a downtown New York office building it sold last year to a converter.

The Latest Trend in Your Work Wardrobe Stinks

Performance fabrics move from workout gear to business attire—with some odorous downsides

Office-to-residential conversions are gaining traction, helping revitalize depressed business districts