As a professional dancer engaged to a hockey player, chances are you’re bound to catch Julianne Hough in workout gear at any given point during the week. “I was wearing leggings to run errands before that was a cool thing to do!” she tells PeopleStyle. So it was only a matter of time before she collaborated on her own collection with MPG Sport, which hit stores this week. We chatted with a spandex-clad Hough, 27, before her kickoff appearance at the N.Y.C. Lord & Taylor (which will be selling the line nationwide) to find out just how many gym clothes she’s got (and spoiler: It’s a lot).
Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Lord & Taylor
Much like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model trying to estimate how many bikinis she has, Hough would have a hard time putting a number to her extensive sports bra collection. “Oh my gosh, no!” she says, laughing, when asked if she can guess. “Look at my assistant’s face! I would probably say [she counts] I have seven drawer/shelf options, and then stuff that’s hung up, too. But most of it’s going away, because now I have this line — I love it so much, but also because there’s just way too much stuff in my closet.”
If she finds herself with extras from here on out, she has a waiting group of A-list testers happy to help her out. “Jessica Szohr, Nina [Dobrev] — all my friends texted me, ‘I’m going to go on the site tomorrow and get stuff!’” she says. “I’m like, Why didn’t you guys just tell me? I’ll just send you guys some stuff!”
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And her girlfriends came by their obsession naturally. “My friends know I have a workout every Monday through Friday, [and] I always get calls from my girlfriends, like, What are you doing tomorrow, can we join your workout?” she says. “Nina and Sarah Hyland came to my Body by Simone class the other day, I was wearing my stuff and they were like, What is that? And I was like, It’s my line! It’s fun. It feels really natural and organic to me to do something like this, which is so part of my lifestyle.”
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Hough’s first collection was a curated selection of pieces, but the upcoming fall line will have her design influence, which means you can expect it to be “a little more sassy,” she says. “When I go rehearse for my tour that I did with my brother or when I go to dance class, you kind of want a little bit of sexiness, a little bit of sass, so you feel good when you’re dancing.” She adds that drew on her extensive experience in athletic wear to help come up with the designs: “I’m quite picky with how I like to wear things. One, I like it to fit good, but I also like it to look good. If I feel like I don’t look good in the mirror when I’m dancing or whatever, I’m always trying to make it look cute” instead of focusing on the workout.
Some pieces from my new collection with @mpgsport check out the link in their bio!
A photo posted by Julianne Hough (@juleshough) on Mar 8, 2016 at 12:54pm PST
But even a gym fiend like Hough needs a little boost to get in gear occasionally. For her right now, it’s blasting some Selena Gomez to rev her up. “Because of my dance background, any of Selena’s new songs, that gets me: ‘I feel like a sexy woman! Strong, sexy woman!’” she says, giving us a preview of some of her moves. “I dance my way through the pain!”
And soon enough, she’ll have even more of a motivator: She’ll soon see fans wearing her clothes to their own sweat sessions. “I’ll freak out, are you kidding me?” she says of that day. “To actually see somebody that they can physically put on their body and and wear, something that makes them feel good — the fact that I can be a part of that — I’ll totally be like, ‘Ahh, that’s mine!’ Hopefully they like it!”
Are you excited to check out her clothes?
— Alex Apatoff
Follow @nicefunalex
