This is the Lemony Garlicky Miso Gochujang Pasta of Running Shorts

It’s not often a pair of athletic shorts brings to mind a viral food meme about Lemony Garlickly Miso Gochujang Brown Butter Pasta, but then came Satisfy’s $250 AmbientWarp 5" Unlined Shorts. 

Despite the simple name, they’re essentially a Final Boss amalgamation of half a dozen popular fashion trends.

There’s the workwear-friendly double-knee silhouette, ironically chopped well above knee-length; the artisanal trompe l'oeil effect of white paint spatters and/or suspicious bodily fluids; the high-tech Japanese fabric with a fancy name in big, bold print on the leg. (AmbientWarp, for those not up on Satisfy’s latest sportswear innovations, is essentially fancier micro-twill poly that dries quickly.)  

Some might say we’ve strayed too far from God’s light, considering running shorts were just flimsy, hopelessly plain little bits of fabric stitched together. Others might say that even in this far more fashionable activewear era, these shorts are doing way too much. They’d all be wrong. 

We’re in the Wild West era of athletic clothes, where things are frankly ridiculous. Part of that is thanks to Satisfy’s grunge-loving founder, Brice Partouche, a skater and drummer who launched the French label to create a running wardrobe that matched his proclivity for tattered clothing—without losing any of the techy elements of good gear.

Satisfy has done “moth-bitten” T-shirts, and washed-out faux “denim” jorts (and actual denim with Levi’s). If we’re meant to live in a society where sweating profusely as you attempt to exercise also means flexing your fashion bona fides with the latest trendy sportswear brand, at least Satisfy’s maximalist shorts feel in on the joke. 

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