Did See-Through Yoga Pants Cause Lululemon CEO To Quit?

After the athletic brand Lululemon had to recall a line of yoga pants because they became increasingly more see-through every time they were washed, the CEO of the company spontaneously stepped down. Some suspected Lululemon’s ex-Chief Executive Officer, Christine Day, quit the job because of the yoga pants product recall. But Day recently spoke up about her decision to leave Lululemon, and her reasons might surprise you.

According to Fortune, Christine Day addressed the rumor at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen conference that took place this Wednesday. Day claims that she only left Lululemon because her vision for the company didn’t match that of Lululemon founder Chip Wilson.

“You have to take control of your own life and say, ‘This isn’t working for me’… That wasn’t who I was and that wasn’t going to work for me.”

Day claimed that Chip Wilson loved “disruption and clash,” which isn’t at all what she wanted from her time at Lululemon. As for the see-through yoga pants fiasco, Christine Day claims it had nothing to do with her departure from Lululemon. In fact, Day didn’t even perceive the sheer pants debacle as a career failure. She reminded conference attendees that to be successful in a company like Lululemon you have to “manage through bad times as well as good times.”

Despite these claims, an earlier report from Fortune states that Lululemon’s reputation was irreversibly damaged by the sheer yoga pants mistake. A mere three months after the product had to be removed from the Lululemon catalog, Christine Day stepped down as CEO. And while Lululemon tried to make it very clear that her resignation was unrelated to the yoga pants recall, all Day had to say at the time was, “My values include discretion.”

It wasn’t until this week that Christine Day finally spoke out against Chip Wilson’s methods of running Lululemon and re-iterated the company’s claim that the see-through pants disaster was not her responsibility. Lululemon blamed their manufacturer for the sheerness of their product.

Even though Lululemon is one of the fastest growing companies in business, the sheer pants mistake cost them a 20% stock drop and $2 billion in shareholder value. Lululemon is now searching for a new CEO to take over the company and pick up the pieces from the yoga pants recall.

Yoga pants have been the source of a lot of controversy lately, even without the transparency of the Lululemon brand. Yoga pants have been banned from several schools for being too revealing.

[Image courtesy of Fortune]