Lululemon is done with this cool-down. No, not your post-workout, low-intensity cardio (though you probably could keep that up for a few more counts). It’s the icy temperament of the seasons changing, which more often than not, has a way of slowing things down to a state of surrender-adjacent inertia—and there is perhaps nothing quite as anti-lululemon as a slowdown sans intention. But amid howling winds, heavy downpours, and bone-chilling frosts, getting from point A to B, as is de rigeur in the hustle and bustle of an athlete’s life…well, let’s just say a whole choreography of layering, zipping, and fastening can leave you spent. Now, in true lululemon fashion, the Canadian athletic apparel brand isn’t all too keen on tapping out; it’s going to get up and do something about it. With an outerwear collection geared at taking the end-of-year chill head-on (and a knockout campaign to match), lululemon plans on quieting the weather and all the stat-hindering brouhaha that accompanies it.
A testament to everyday movement, lululemon’s latest offerings encapsulate all the indefatigable performance of an athlete’s day—minus the burnout. Rather, with meticulously tested thermal technology, each piece keeps the burn in. The silhouette of the season is robust, nebulous, on some counts, as puffers go plusher than ever before with lightweight and highly compressible 900-fill-power, RDS-certified down. In all its voluminous glory, lululemon’s Featherweight is all puff and no fluff. And yet, with an attachable pouch to pack it all in for the athlete on the go, this coat can go full-on fab to in-the-bag with the swift closure of a drawstring. “This is the stuff that alpinists use to protect their lives, you know, in real-world extreme situations,” noted JJ Collier, Vice President of Outerwear Design at lululemon, on an exclusive call. Collier isn’t afraid to go meta when it comes to warmth and all the seams that weave it together. He’s gone to great lengths, stepping back and turning over the idea with his team, and wants you to feel “blown away,” as he put it, by “this warmth that you're experiencing, even though you can't feel it on your body.”
But beyond its Featherweight line, that feeling of weightless warmth emanates throughout the entire collection. It’s a guiding feel, whose innovative spirit unites expedition-grade materials and savvy style instincts to bring a summit state of mind down to the streets. Whether the Wunder Puff Bomber Hoodie, whose all-encompassing puff offers inescapable warmth, or the Wunder Puff Bomber Vest, with its sleeveless design that allows for a highly stylized, low-commitment take on wintery dressing, the collection could very well make those pesky shivers a distant memory.
Depending on the pursuit—whether that’s one that ventures uptown for a little recovery or downtown for a little revelry—it’s one that calls for different paths of protection. At the intersection of those paths, the ThermoZen Insulated Mac Coat, filled with the plush warmth of Primaloft Gold insulation, offers protection from the elements on all fronts: water-resistant Glyde fabric, a windproof design, and a frost-defiant microfibre construction that traps heat.
At lululemon, Collier spends a lot of time with the kinds of questions that bring forth these sorts of epiphanies. And when the answers aren’t all too clear (even after lengthy meditations on meditations), he might look for those answers outside the lululemon lab, tap in a few brand ambassadors, and put those ideas to the test—no matter if on the mountains, mat, or otherwise. And it’s precisely that give-and-take with lululemon’s community that inspired the collection’s campaign. “Quiet the Weather,” as it’s titled, follows the brand’s coterie of ambassadors—Lewis Hamilton, Chris Lee, Ayan Broomfield, Marc Tortell, and Shota Yamaguchi, among them—through chilling city streets as they make their way from stat crush to dopamine rush, donning none other than lululemon’s latest threads. “They are fundamentally behind the mission,” reflected Collier. “They understand why we do this.”
Once upon a time, Collier was behind the mission in a different way, not in the studio turning insights into the tangible, as he is now, but out on the slopes collecting some of those insights, much like the brand’s ambassadors. As a professional snowboarder-turned-fashion-designer, he understands exactly all the minutiae that amount to the perfect fit, be it the neck drop (“My team would joke around about me being kind of a stickler!”), the anatomy of the perfect sleeve, or the exact weight of down-fill amid a gravity-defying tail-grab. After all, such painstaking consideration can only really come from lived experience.
And though it’s all quite exhilarating, this labor of love is a labor, no less. So when it comes to attaining some of that very dopamine for your own, you needn’t get caught up in the pain of the staking. With one of the collection’s pieces, lululemon’s got you covered; all you have to do is keep moving. What’s more, later this season, lululemon will be the first brand to introduce PrimaLoft® UltraPeak™, PrimaLoft’s warmest insulation technology to date, available exclusively through lululemon’s Hi-Loft Collection. This is just the warm-up.
Discover the collection here.
