Charlotte de Witte taps Olympic gold medalists on festival-geared activewear via her KNTXT imprint

Team Belgium has created a notch in the world of sports and music with female powerhouse names — Charlotte de Witte and 42I54 founders, Olympic gold medalists Elodie Ouedraogo and Olivia Borlée. Inspired by the connection between passion, high performance and sustainability acts, these women set out to create a new activewear program — KNTXT Active.

The label's first capsule collection launched on July 23 and saw sleek rave elements like neon printed blocks of colour with bold typography on second skin lightweight materials.

Witte's label, KNTXT has been a fast-growing imprint in the music industry that stays true to her core ingredient — techno. Her objective was to keep the authenticity of the underground sound while showcasing local and international talent through podcasts, livestreams, mixes and radio shows. She also uses the label as an avenue to find young aspiring producers. Where music and Charlotte's passions collide plus the abrupt halt to the nightlife industry, is where KNTXT Active was engineered.

“The pandemic allowed me to become more focused on fitness and health since I had more time due to the pause on touring,” de Witte says. “This sparked the idea to further investigate this under the name KNTXT Active.”

Prior to the pandemic, Witte has made her mark in the Asian territory with bookings in Shanghai, Bali, New Delhi, Pune, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and more.

Along with this, Apple music partnered up with the team to curate exclusively tailored mixes based on specific BPM's of each workout. For example, Witte explains, “if you have something more ambient, very chilled out electronic music, that could, for instance, be a stretch workout. Or if there’s this high energy, bumping set, it can be used as a running workout. If you listen to techno, it’s fast, it pushes you as well as distracts you from your suffering while you’re running."

There are currently three mixes in the series which are ‘Stretching’, ‘130 BPM’ and ‘145 BPM’, all curated by Charlotte de Witte.

42I54 — a very simple brand stamp for Elodie Ouedraogo and Olivia Borlée, it was in reference to their winning timestamp of 42:54 in the women's 4x100 relay race for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The two long time friends moved into the fashion world as they wanted to bring an eco-friendly ethos to activewear stating that "great design should be sustainable".

Both parties were motivated by similar interests with the athletes harnessing the power of music to train or how artists use sports to stay motivated. The bridge between KNTXT Active aims to influence more music lovers to activewear as Charlotte explains, "what I really like in the pieces is that while it is technically activewear, it can also be worn at a club or a music festival."

Check out exclusive KNTXT Active tracks here on Apple music's platform, and cop your own KNTXT Active x 42I54's activewear here