Passionate about fitness and fashion, Sarween Salih started teaching fitness classes on the side while employed as a consultant with Deloitte. After discovering several high-end athleisure brands that she loved, Salih decided to begin curating her own shop: S3 Active.
“The brands were higher fashion than I had seen for athleisure,” says Salih. “They were durable and able to withstand the actual workouts and transfer over to lifestyle outside of working out.”
S3 Active currently carries twelve brands, including Michi, Koral Activewear, Splits 59, and Spiritual Gangster, among others. The selection of brands and styles is overall high-end–leggings run between $70 and $210–but for a more fashionable approach to activewear, S3 Active has the look on lock.
Salih’s boutique began as a pop-up at the fitness studio she was teaching in before she moved to a brief pop-up at Union Market last November. Salih then opened a longer pop-up at Lab 1270. Now, Salih is moving S3 Active to The Shay, where it’ll open this weekend at 1924 8th Street, NW, Suite 100, near North End Shaw’s other new retail.
“This will also be a temporary space just to get some exposure and try out different neighborhoods,” says Salih. “I’ll probably be doing short term pop-ups until I feel ready to settle down with it.”
So why are we obsessed? Salih has curated some truly gorgeous athleisure brands–and even if we never actually sweat in any of them, we’d be happy spending all of our non-working hours in the stylish leggings, sports bras, and tanks she stocks.
Salih is still in the process of launching a S3 Active website, but take a peek at the Instagram posts below for the athleisure looks of your dreams.
Caroline Cunningham joined Washingtonian in 2014 after moving to the DC area from Cincinnati, where she interned and freelanced for Cincinnati Magazine and worked in content marketing. She currently resides in College Park.
