Ex-Employees Allege Lululemon In Chicago Fosters Anti-Black Environment

Lululemon has struggled to beat the allegations that it caters to a very specific clientele, namely white women with money.

Lululemon has been hit with complaints at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from six ex-employees at one of its Chicago store. According to Business Of Fashion, in addition to the six ex-employees, 14 additional current and former employees have described a culture at the company that they say is not welcoming to Black people.

In June 2020, like many other companies post-George Floyd, Lululemon made a pledge to create a more diverse workplace, issuing this statement, “The Black Lives Matter movement acted as a powerful catalyst within Lululemon. After many real and impactful conversations with their underrepresented employees and greater community, Lululemon’s Senior Leadership Team made the following commitments to stand up and fund Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Action within the organization to support meaningful, lasting change in the world.”

However, according to the employees who spoke to Business Of Fashion, the central part of Lululemon’s platform, its Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Action department, was not allowed to have any significant impact.

Konesha Armstrong, who was the store operations lead at the Hyde Park location, said she felt as though it were a game of smoke and mirrors during her time at the company, saying, “[Lululemon] makes you feel like it’s going to be supportive and you’re not going to be a part of the history of micro-aggressive behavior and it just isn’t the case.”

Lululemon has struggled to beat the allegations that it caters to a very specific clientele, namely white women with money. Allison Torres Burtka wrote in a 2021 op-ed for Prism Reports that in 2004, the company’s founder, Chip Wilson, reportedly claimed that the name in part was chosen because he took pleasure in watching Japanese people try to say it. Wilson allegedly said, “The reason the Japanese liked [my former skateboard brand, ‘Homeless’] was because it had an L in it and a Japanese marketing firm wouldn’t come up with a brand name with an L in it…It’s a tough pronunciation for them.”

Wilson, of course, denied making the statement in a 2005 interview, but during the #StopAsianHate protests, when Instagram users called on the brand to change its name, a relatively benign act, the company responded by telling them, “We want you to know this is not who we are today nor the future we choose. Our founder has not been part of Lululemon for many years. We are focused on expressing our support for the Asian community.”

As the brand readied its arrival on Chicago’s South Side, the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, heralded its arrival as another sign of the area’s encroaching gentrification. According to Michael Collins, the store manager at the Hyde Park location, the leadership at Lululemon resisted his efforts to staff the Hyde Park location with Black talent. Collins told the Business Of Fashion that he was instructed to hire more white and Asian workers in order to better reflect the population of the University of Chicago. Collins, undeterred, pressed on with his initial plan. Collins, who also filed an EEOC complaint, told the outlet that it took him eight rounds of interviews to land his job, whereas it only took white people in his position two rounds.

Stacia Jones, a corporate lawyer who previously worked for Abercrombie & Fitch handling employee claims against the company, was hired to lead the IDEA team, but Jones also was the head of employee relations, which complicated things when it came time to investigate claims of racial discrimination from employees. Armstrong said that when she recounted an incident she where white customers remarked that she was “off-brand” within her earshot, Jones was not supportive.

According to Amber Cabral, a DEI strategist unaffiliated with Lululemon, the way the company structured the roles can lead to confusion about what should be clearly defined organizational roles. Typically, there is distance between a DEI lead and the person who is tasked with managing employee complaints. Based on the complaints from employees, Lululemon may have wanted Jones to be more of a guard dog, that is, to be more protective of their interests as opposed to protecting their employees, but that is not necessarily the job which Jones was actually hired to do. Cabral told Business Of Fashion, “DEI leaders need to be able to recognize that just because something is not illegal, that doesn’t mean it’s equitable,” Cabral said. “That matters because, if you’re in a DEI department, equity is at the centre.”

Armstrong told Business Of Fashion, “[They] told me it didn’t go over well with Stacia,” Armstrong said. “It felt like, if I wanted to move up in the company…that I would probably be blocked or retaliated against because it was problematic that I’m pointing out the problems in the company.”

Armstrong summarized her feelings about her time with the company, telling the outlet, “This company started out being prejudiced, they basically said ‘we only want tall, blonde, white women and you have to be a size six,’” Armstrong explained. “A lot of the things that they have in place and even the language that they use still support the foundation of what this company is.”