Oops, he did it again. Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, that is: one of Canadian fashion’s most successful entrepreneurs and one of our most cringeworthy.
In his latest blunder, Wilson criticized the activewear company, which he is no longer involved with, for its “whole diversity and inclusion thing.” In a Forbes interview released this week, he also said, “they’re trying to become like the Gap, everything to everybody.”
He doubled down on his long-held body-shaming stance by calling the people in the brand’s ads “unhealthy,” “sickly” and “not inspirational.” And he capped this off by saying some people are, in his view, undesirable wearers of Lululemon apparel. “You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.”
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Just: ouch.
While Wilson is still Lululemon’s largest shareholder—an 8 per cent stake that underpins a net worth that Forbes estimates at nearly $7 billion USD—he left the company in 2015. That came after another scandal, when he was asked about a fabric transparency issue and responded, “some women’s bodies don’t actually work” for yoga pants, the brand’s signature style.
Lululemon founder Chip Wilson attends an announcement for the Wilson 5 Foundation in Vancouver, Sept. 15, 2022.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
It takes a special kind of arrogance for a person—who is still raking in the profits of exercise gear—to articulate such a prehistoric and reprehensible view of people's bodies. Wilson inserted these comments back into the cultural maelstrom with no provocation. He had to know it would land him smack in the middle of a conversation about how awful he is; presumably he’s not concerned his belligerence will eventually hit his own bottom line.
Today, the company wants to distance itself as much as possible from its big-mouth founder. “Chip Wilson does not speak for lululemon, and his comments do not reflect our company views or beliefs,” was the brand’s statement to Bloomberg, adding that since Wilson left, “we are a very different company today.”
Indeed, Lululemon's current values are clearly spelled out in its intentions and progress on IDEA, which stands for inclusion, diversity, equity and action. Its yoga pants now go up to size 22X. And when it outfitted the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic teams for the 2022 Winter Games (which it will do until 2028), it made a concerted effort to highlight its Paralympic ambassadors.
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When Wilson started Lululemon in Vancouver in 1998, he was a new yoga enthusiast who had just sold his first company, Westbeach, a surf, skate and snowboarding brand. In his autobiography on his own website, Wilson writes: “At the time, yoga was a hippie concept in the same vein as meditation and the wellness communes that sprinkled the Vancouver area.” He decided yoga was due for a rebrand.
If you are tempted to read his autobiography, know there is a lot of hubris to wince at. He cites the very customer feedback that led to his eventual demise—that yoga wear was see-through—as an early motivating factor. “Transparency was the first issue I wanted to solve. I believed that if I could solve the transparency problem, address camel-toe, and thicken the fabric to mask imperfections, I could create a perfect athletic garment for women.” Make that: some women.
Wilson was right about yoga being ripe for mass marketing. By the time he opened the first Lululemon store in 2000, he was well positioned to ride the wave of the biggest clothing trend of our times: Athleisure. The advent of stretchy, comfy clothes that could be worn from the gym to the coffee shop to everywhere we went about our daytime activities would revolutionize the way we lived and dressed.
Because it was early on the athleisure market, and because athletic clothing is by its nature close-fitting, Lululemon has long been at the centre of wider debates around body image. In the 2010s, this centred on how much of their bodies people—mostly women—should be showing in public. Leggings are not pants, was the battle cry. Schools from Halifax to Ottawa banned girls from wearing yoga pants to school unless they were sufficiently covered up.
On one point, Wilson is right: a fashion brand can’t be everything to everybody. But that’s because it’s unrealistic that everyone will choose you; it’s not license to deliberately exclude people who wear larger sizes, or are older, or disabled, or specific genders or races or religions for that matter. The best contemporary fashion businesses are trying to grow the way the Chip-less Lululemon is: by expanding size ranges, and using innovative fabric technology to improve fit and user experience for us all. But most importantly, by making everyone feel included in the conversation.
Leanne Delap is a Toronto-based freelance contributor for the Star and The Kit, where she writes about fashion and culture. Reach her via email: leannedelap@hotmail.com.
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