The Crash A weekly newsletter helping you fit together the pieces of the global economic slowdown. Select and enter your email address Morning Call Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. The new Western fashion for yoga – and thus for Lululemon clothing – was all about her. Wilson identified a new kind of consumer: the childless female graduate with money and time to spare and an intense interest in maintaining her appearance. It was also a result of changing demographics. The success of Lululemon was not only a result of its clever products. Lululemon now has 574 shops, found on some of the most prestigious streets in the world. Wilson designed a new kind of clothing – sweat-wicking, super stretchy leggings that were both comfortable and flattering – that came to be known as “athleisure”. He saw a potential market in yoga, which had been gaining in popularity in the West since the 1960s but for which there was not, so far, a prescribed uniform.
In 1998 Wilson had already established himself as an entrepreneur with an eye for sportswear trends. The author is Chip Wilson, founder of Lululemon, a Canadian sportswear brand that sells high-end products to a primarily female customer base. What happens when a company that built its brand on aspirational ideals of “empowerment” rubs up against the dirty reality of 21st-century capitalism? This is a question that often comes to mind when I see women on the Tube in luxurious yoga-wear – and one that I’m now much better placed to answer having read a book with the marvellous title Little Black Stretchy Pants.
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