When wandering across campus, particularly towards Freshman Land, it is typical to encounter hordes of students outfitted in Lululemon activewear. As athleisure continues to dominate contemporary female style, this phenomenon has only grown more common. At this point Lululemon has achieved cult classic status, cementing their spot as a cornerstone of young adult style.
But is Lululemon a cult classic? Or is the brand just a cult, hiding their unethical business practices under luxury prices and bold patterns?
According to a March press release, Lululemon made $10.6 billion in 2024. With basic leggings selling for just short of $100, this amount should not be surprising.
In fact, a common psychological concept explains why this luxury pricing would cause even more consumers to be drawn to the brand.
“Consumers’ enduring desire for luxury largely derives from the need for status, that is, ‘respect, admiration, and voluntary deference …afforded by others,” said David Dubois in his review ‘The psychology of luxury consumption’ from the journal ‘Current Opinion in Psychology’.
Despite this concept, one LMU student says the real reason she is drawn to the brand is their unparalleled quality.
Rachel Bullock, an avid Lululemon wearer, explained that the brand dominates her closet because of its wearability and superiority to other athletic wear, not because she feels any sort of brand loyalty or connection to their practices.
“As a dancer, it’s just easy to move in… it’s comfortable, it doesn’t restrict my movements at all,” Bullock said.
She continued to explain that other brands fail to measure up, with Athleta pieces fitting “a little bit baggier” and Vuori items having a tendency to be “too thick in a way” for her to prefer them.
In comparison with these other brands, Lululemon has much more of a turbulent past.
The brand has often come under fire for failures in sustainability and the use of sweatshop labor, as well as their controversial founder.
Back in a 2004 interview with Canada’s National Post Business magazine, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson stated that he chose the company’s name because Japanese people struggle to pronounce the letter “L.”. According to Wilson, creating a difficult to pronounce brand name would only serve to increase the brand’s desirability in that market. While he parted ways from the company in 2013, the fact remains that the history behind the brand’s name stems from hateful rhetoric, and no public action has been taken to change that.
Furthermore, according to Lululemon’s 2024 Modern Slavery Statement, the brand, “recognize[s] both the opportunity and responsibility to actively safeguard the working conditions of the people who make our products and to contribute to addressing the risk of modern slavery, including forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor, in our supply chain.”
Forced and child labor are mentioned frequently in the statement, as well as the measures the brand has put in place against them. However, fair wages are not mentioned anywhere. Given that the majority of their manufacturing takes place in countries like Sri Lanka and Cambodia with lower employee compensation standards, Lululemon has no obligation to pay workers salaries comparable to the American minimum wage, and therefore likely does not.
While the product should be able to speak for itself, and it does – I love my Lululemon Hotty Hot shorts dearly – the brand’s unethicality and controversiality make it a much less desirable choice than the other activewear options Bullock mentioned. With a price point that high, a brand founded on racist rhetoric, should not be the go-to.
Lululemon’s tainted past and deceptive present have only elevated their status as a cult classic, though a glance behind the positive messaging and claims of sustainability reveals a cult, drawing more consumers in every day.
