Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) continues to be a hot topic into the new year.
via: Complex
Lululemon founder Chip Wilson is at odds with his former company over their diversity and inclusion efforts.
The 68-year-old recently spoke to Forbes and outright said that he’s against the “whole diversity and inclusion thing,” saying that the models in Lululemon advertisements look “unhealthy,” “sickly” and “not inspirational.” “They’re trying to become like the Gap, everything to everybody,” Wilson said.
According to Wilson, the company should change their standards and have an ideal audience rather than broadening their efforts. “I think the definition of a brand is that you’re not everything to everybody,” Wilson told Forbes. “You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.”
Wilson was Lululemon’s CEO until 2007 and later stepped down from his chairman position in 2013, shortly after he controversially said that “some women’s bodies just don’t actually work” for the brand’s yoga pants. “It’s really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there over a period of time, how much they use it,” Wilson added in his 2013 interview with Bloomberg TV, which sparked public outrage.
A spokesperson for Lululemon told Newsweek that Wilson “has not been involved with the company since resigning from the board in 2015 and we are a very different company today.” However, the billionaire still has an eight-percent stock in the company, which he founded in 1998 after years of being a yoga enthusiast.
Aside from Wilson’s history of weight-shaming, Lululemon has faced other recent problems, from two employees being fired for confronting thieves to being sued by Nike for patent infringement.
