Taiwanese sports fashion

I'd like to start by saying that I'm absolutely no fashion guru. However, I'd like to tell you guys about the sports fashion in Taiwan.

Sports fashion is kind of big in Taiwan. Everywhere you go, you can see sport shops and people are dressed kind of sporty and casual. Sports shops are very concentrated along and around Roosevelt Road in Gongguan (red or green MRT line) with approximately over 10-15 stores.

If you go to Shilin Night Market or Ximenting, you will find plenty of sports shops there as well.
What I miss in Taiwan though are sporting goods chains like Stadium, Intersport or Team Sportia in Sweden and a chain like Super Sport in Thailand. There is a big chain called Momentum here, but they don't offer complete solutions like the stores in Sweden.

Everywhere go you here, you can only find stores selling shoes, clothes and some accessories. I would like to find both equipment, clothes and accessories. However, I just heard from a colleague that there is a big French chain called Decathlon that just opened a store in Neihu. Their first store is in Taichung, south of Taipei. This store sells basically everything about outdoor equipment and sports. I went to Neihu to have a look. I could only find their own brands and the price level was not good at all. There were absolutely no international brands. I would say it is just crap out there.

Let me then tell you about the sport brands that you can find here.
Do you remember brands like Kappa, Fila, Lotto, Hang Ten, Diadora and Airwalk? Well, these brands are long gone or out of fashion in Europe. In Taiwan, they are still quite present. In every department store (there are many!) you will find a section with these good old brands. The style and design are really not up-to-date. However, you could still see many people wearing these brands because they are considered to be on a reasonable price level.

Nike, Adidas, New Balance and Puma have numerous stores in Taipei. These brands are considered as the high end brands. From what I've learnt, some of these clothes are designed and produced locally. This means that you might not be able to find the same item abroad. Other brands you can find here are Asics, Reebok, K-Swiss, Brooks, Merrell, Saucony and Converse. A newcomer that is popping up and becoming very famous is Under Armour. There are some local brands like Firestar, Five-Up, V and SOFO, and they are often sold in the same multi-brand-store together with the other famous brands.

The sports fashion here in general is baggy sweatpants with very wide lower trouser legs and high sole sport shoes. This kind of style is long gone in Europe where people use slim fit or skinny pants (like Adidas Tiro or Condivo models) and low sole sport shoes together with slim fit tshirts.
Sizes in Taiwan are sometimes very strange where Medium is the smallest although there are still many people that are quite small and short (like me). In general, slim fit fashion is not so popular here (yet).

Fashion wise, I've seen some epic fails at the gym: A guy wearing a winter hat and vest. Guys wearing loafers or boots. A guy wearing what seems to be pyjamas pants. A girl carrying a handbag during the whole cross trainer session.

I have also never seen any other places where they have so many sport caps like here. There are really thousands and thousands of models to choose from. Taiwanese people tend to really like wearing a cap since baseball and basketball are very big sports here. Most popular right now are snapback caps. Most of them have the letters NY on it. New York, that is. You can also find stuff like Obey, Supreme (sometimes misspelled as Superme!), DOPE and BOY.

If you are looking for sports items, do it here in Taiwan!