The morning sun threw a halo of light on the billboard-size liability waiver standing at the trailhead of Grouse Grind, a steep, dangerous ascent just outside Vancouver, British Columbia. Hikers were warned of their assumption of risk, and the hazards detailed included property loss and death as well as “slippery, unstable and dangerous trail conditions; avalanches; rockfall; cliffs, gullies, ravines and waterfalls; rapidly changing weather conditions; overexertion, dehydration and exposure; encounters with domestic or wild animals” and, not least, “becoming lost.”
Dennis (Chip) Wilson, the 59-year-old founder of the Lululemon Athletica clothing line, who was dressed all in gray — long Lululemon shorts and a tightfitting shirt, with size 14 Nikes on his feet — was unconcerned. “Only 14 people have died this year!” he joked, breaking into a trot. Wilson said he was climbing the 1.8 near-vertical miles for the sixth time in six days. The hike gave him a Zen feeling and kept him in the moment, just as yoga once did. He needed that, he said, because “I feel like I’ve kind of been in prison.”
‘If you’re doing a brand well, you need to offend somebody, or you’re not standing for anything.’
Wilson made a fortune convincing women that nirvana was just a $100 pair of stretch pants away, but he lost his sure footing over the past two years. In March 2013, Lululemon recalled 17 percent of its black yoga pants — which don’t come in a size larger than 12 — because its proprietary Luon fabric was too sheer. Some women who tried to return the pants at Lululemon stores said they were told to put them on and bend over so staff members could determine just how see-through they were. After a monthslong public-relations disaster, Wilson, who was chairman of the company, went on Bloomberg TV that November to share what he thought was a reasonable explanation. “Some women’s bodies don’t work for the pants,” he said. “It’s really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there over a period of time.”
It was not Wilson’s first tone-deaf public moment, but it would prove the most costly, especially when, a week later, he recorded a video apology that went viral on YouTube. In his twitchy, quivering statement, he didn’t apologize to customers or more generally to women. Instead, he apologized to his employees. (He was told, he says now, that the video was intended only for dissemination within Lululemon.) The backlash was swift: ABC News asked, “Worst apology ever?” Stephen Colbert pounced, comparing Wilson’s handling of the episode to “lifting your leg to pee on customers and then blaming them for being wet.” After playing a clip of Wilson’s mea culpa, Colbert continued: “You hear that, ladies? Chip Wilson is sad that your chafing ham hocks made him put his employees through this difficult time.”
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“It’s ultimately that the two companies will start to compete with each other,” he explained. “Because all clothing is moving into technical athleta-leisure or business athleticism. That’s where it’s all going.” Kit and Ace, he said, “is the next Lululemon, so to speak.”
More than once, the way Wilson spoke reminded me of the airhead fashion model Ben Stiller plays in “Zoolander.” But for all his off-putting and impolitic utterances (in a blog post about Lululemon’s origins, he infamously linked the use of birth control to rising divorce rates, and claimed this led to his future market), he has a kind of genius for forecasting trends and assessing the human impulses — vanity, insecurity, the yearning for perfection — that make people pay more for something they could buy much cheaper elsewhere.
During our climb up Grouse Grind, nearly everyone we encountered seemed to be wearing Lululemon. Wilson told me he often stops people on the ascent to ask them how the clothes are working for them. The trail is a great laboratory for such customer research, he said, because it’s so punishing that people usually welcome the excuse to stop for a second. As he spoke, a shapely brunette approached from below. She passed us on the narrow trail, wearing pants with the Lululemon logo just above her tailbone. Wilson followed her backside with his eyes. He turned to me with a grin. “It’s my job,” he said. “I have to look.”
Amy Wallace is editor at large of Los Angeles magazine and a correspondent for GQ. Her last article for the magazine was a profile of the actress Viola Davis.
A version of this article appears in print on February 8, 2015, on page MM20 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: It’s a Stretch. Today’s Paper|Subscribe
