our why
WHY GIÙ?
Because what you wear shouldn’t cost you your health.
Giù was born from one question:
If I’m working out to take care of my body, why had I never questioned what I was wearing directly against it?
THE GIÙ STORY
I Had No Choice But to Start This Brand.
I’ve struggled with hormone imbalance since I learned what hormones were.
Over the years, that made me increasingly conscious of what I was putting in, on, and around my body.
Then, while my dad was battling cancer, health became something I thought about on an entirely different level.
I started questioning things I had never questioned before.
Including my clothes.
I’ve loved working out — especially heated workouts — for years. But when I finally started looking at the tags inside the workout sets I wore every day, almost all of them said the same thing:
Polyester. Nylon.
Synthetic, plastic-based fibers.
So I went looking for an alternative.
I wanted activewear made without synthetic plastic fibers that still looked, fit, and felt like the workout clothes I actually wanted to wear.
I found brands talking about sustainability.
I found recycled polyester.
I found brands calling themselves “conscious.”
But I still couldn’t find what I was looking for.
So I decided to create it.
That became Giù.
Activewear made differently, for anyone who has started questioning what their clothes are made of too.
THE PROBLEM
Your workout clothes are probably made of plastic.
Flip over the tag on almost any pair of leggings, sports bra, or workout set and you’ll probably see two familiar words:
Polyester and nylon.
They’ve become standard in activewear because they’re durable, stretchy, inexpensive to manufacture, and easy to engineer for performance.
But they are also synthetic, plastic-based fibers.
And once I realized that the majority of the activewear in my closet was made primarily from plastic, I couldn’t unlearn it.
Especially when those were the clothes I wore tight against my body while sweating, moving, and working out.
And there was another piece I couldn’t stop thinking about:
Your skin absorbs more than you think.
Research has shown that certain substances present in textiles can migrate into sweat and be absorbed through the skin.
That doesn’t mean your skin absorbs your entire shirt.
It means what sits against your skin isn’t irrelevant.
And when I had the choice between continuing to work out in synthetic plastic fibers or trying to build another option...
I wanted another option.
So maybe not plastic?
THE GIÙ DIFFERENCE
We started with the fabric label.
Most activewear brands start with performance and work backward.
We started with a different question:
What do we actually want sitting against our skin?
So instead of taking the standard activewear formula and slightly improving it, Giù was built from the beginning around removing the synthetic plastic fibers that dominate the category.
NO POLYESTER.
NO NYLON.
NO SYNTHETIC PLASTIC FIBERS.
100% PLASTIC-FREE.
Instead, our pieces are made using hemp and cotton.
Two plant-based fibers.
Because making a better workout set shouldn’t only mean changing the cut, adding another pocket, or releasing a new color.
Sometimes it means reconsidering what the workout set is made of in the first place.
WHY PLASTIC-FREE?
Because “normal” doesn’t have to mean “our only option.”
Synthetic fibers have become so normal that most of us never think twice about them.
I didn’t.
For years.
Giù isn’t here to tell you to throw away your closet.
And it isn’t built on fear.
It’s built on choice.
If you’re already reading the ingredients in your food, your skincare, your makeup, your cleaning products, and the things you use every day...
Why wouldn’t you read the ingredients in your clothes?
We think you should have an option when you do.
When I went looking for plastic-free activewear, the options were almost nonexistent — especially in the styles I actually wanted to wear.
We’re here to change that.
THE FABRICS
Meet hemp + cotton.
We wanted to go back to fibers that begin with plants instead of petroleum.
Not because “natural” automatically means perfect.
Because we wanted to rethink activewear from the fiber up.
COTTON
Soft. Plant-based. Absorbent. Familiar for a reason.
Cotton has a long history as a skin-contact fiber, and research comparing fabrics has found it can be better tolerated by sensitive skin than certain synthetic textiles.
It has another interesting advantage when you sweat:
Research comparing workout shirts after exercise found that polyester developed stronger, less pleasant odor than cotton.
For activewear, where sweat is kind of the entire point, that mattered to us.
And for our first pieces specifically, we thought about something else too.
AND YES... WE THOUGHT ABOUT DOWN THERE.
Workout clothes don’t just sit on your arms and legs.
They sit directly against some of the most sensitive skin on a woman’s body — while we’re moving, sweating, creating friction, and generating heat.
Some research looking specifically at women’s underwear has found associations between non-cotton crotch fabrics and yeast vaginitis, although the research is not unanimous.
Giù is not claiming that a workout set can prevent an infection.
We simply think the fabric sitting closest to you deserves just as much thought as the fabric everywhere else.
HEMP
Hemp might be the most interesting fiber in the entire set.
It’s one of the oldest textile fibers in the world, but it has barely been given a chance in modern activewear.
Hemp fibers are highly moisture-absorbent, and research on hemp-containing knitted fabrics has shown promising moisture-management performance — exactly the kind of property we cared about when developing clothing meant to be sweat in.
Hemp has also been studied for naturally occurring antibacterial activity.
Research is promising, but those properties can vary depending on the hemp itself, how the fiber is processed, and how the final fabric is constructed.
So we’re not interested in borrowing a claim from somebody else’s fabric.
We’re interested in testing ours.
Because if we’re going to tell you something about Giù, we want to know that it’s true about Giù.
The more we learn, the more we’ll share.
That’s part of the process.
THE SCIENCE
We’re not here to scare you. We’re here to make you look at the tag.
There is still a lot being studied about synthetic textiles, microplastics, textile chemicals, natural fibers, and the ways clothing interacts with our bodies.
Giù will never pretend the science is more conclusive than it is.
But we won’t pretend there isn’t science worth paying attention to either.
We know polyester and nylon are plastic-based synthetic fibers.
We know synthetic textiles can release microfibers.
We know certain substances found in textiles can migrate into sweat and be absorbed through skin.
We know the fiber your clothing is made from can affect things like moisture, odor, bacterial growth, and how a fabric feels against skin.
And we know that when I went searching for 100% plastic-free activewear, I couldn’t find the workout set I wanted.
That was enough reason for me to build the alternative.
WHY GIÙ EXISTS
I wanted the option I couldn’t find.
Giù isn’t here to tell anyone how to live.
It’s here to give you another choice.
You should be able to care deeply about your health and still care about your outfit.
You should be able to question what your clothes are made of without giving up style.
You should be able to wear something you love and know that someone thought about the fabric label just as much as the fit.
That is what we’re building.
And right now, we’re starting where this entire idea started for me:
women’s activewear.
But Giù’s purpose is bigger than one workout set, one drop, or one category.
It’s about reconsidering what we choose to put against our skin in the first place.
No compromising the outfit.
No compromising the mission.
No synthetic plastic fibers.
Just really good clothes, made differently.
THIS IS GIÙ.
Because what you wear shouldn’t cost you your health.