Lululemon’s New Pants Won’t Show Your Butt Or Give You Camel-Toe — It Promises

This month, Lululemon is unveiling a big revamp to its butt-hugging selection of workout pants: The Canadian retailer is now organizing them by "engineered sensation" instead of simply sorting them by silhouette. You can now pick your pants based on "feel" (yes, you read that correctly), choosing among eight styles categorized as "Relaxed," "Naked," "Held-In," "Hugged," or "Tight." Four out of the eight styles are brand-new, and of the fresh "feels," Naked is made of an advanced material: "lightweight, buttery-soft Nulu fabric." It's the biggest pants revamp that Antonia Iamartino, Lululemon’s design director of future concepts, has worked on during her 10-year stint at the brand. "We used compression as one of the elements to architect and engineer these sensations," Iamartino told Refinery29.

Remember those pesky transparent-trouser issues that plagued Lululemon in 2013? A quick refresher: 17% of its stock was recalled for being see-through, the brand resold the offending sheer slacks a few months later, renaming them the Second Chance Pant. (Plus, founder Chip Wilson made some fat-shaming comments in response to criticisms about quality problems.) Revealing too much shouldn't be an issue with the brand's new styles. “A lot of the things that we had experienced with that in the past never should’ve happened, and we really learned a lot from that [transparent-pants recall] experience,” says Iamartino. “We have new processes, new ways to monitor our fabrics, and new checks-and-balances to just really monitor and keep our eye on that. All of our new pants went through those same procedures and steps to have that not be an experience.”

Besides scrupulously avoiding peekaboo pants, the brand also went about fixing a major gripe of wearing yoga gear: the camel toe. “The anti-camel-toe gusset is a new feature on our All The Right Places pant, and it’s something that we knew was still an experience that many of our guests were having,” Iamartino says. “There were many fittings, lots of back-and-forth with our engineers, refitting and re-tweaking.” Prices for the super-stretchy pants range from $78 to $148, and Lululemon spent more than a year developing its new-and-improved selection. Rest assured, you can downward-dog without fear of baring all, and tap it back in spin class sans camel toe. And if you're lucky, you won't be risking facial injuries via evil drawstrings in these babies, neither. Related Articles
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