How the US became a country of yoga pants

The first yoga pants Lululemon sold in 1998 were a simple item for women to wear in the studio. They were a blend of stretchy nylon and lycra fibers that provided the stretch and softness needed to handle all those sweat-inducing contortions during a long session on the mat.

Yoga, first as an exercise and then as a cultural phenomenon (or cliché, depending on your cynicism), has yet to take hold. At the turn of the century, pants filled a niche for yogis who were simply looking for a high-end alternative to cotton leggings.

Two decades later, they have conquered the closet, even for people who have never entered a yoga studio. In 2014, teens began to favor leggings over jeans. Then people started wearing sportswear to run other errands. Now they even wear yoga pants to the office. Last year, US imports of women's stretch pants surpassed those of jeans for the first time, according to the US Census Bureau.

Fashion trends are constantly seen, but there is rarely a change of category. For four decades, rubber-soled shoes gave way to basketball shoes, which in turn gave way to training shoes. Boxer briefs didn't exist 25 years ago and the drawers were full of vintage boxers. But now the hybrid (boxer brief) is America's most popular men's underwear. Yoga pants also managed to plunge denim into an existential crisis, threatening even Levi Strauss & Co. so profoundly that the company had to struggle to adapt. The company added stretchy, contoured shapes to its jeans while hoping to retain some of its rugged essence.

The popularity of yoga pants has unsurprisingly spawned a slew of competitors as brands fill every segment of the market: from Old Navy's $20 pants to Lucas's $230 versions. Hugh. Lululemoj Athletica, largely credited with bringing stretchy pants to the masses, has poured money into developing new fabrics to fend off rivals, a package that now includes the world's largest athletic companies. .

"Consumers expect much more," said Sun Choe, Lululemon's chief product officer. "They're washing their clothes more and more, and from a quality standpoint, they need to catch up. They're expecting some versatility in their product. They're expecting to be able to wear those pants to the grocery store or to brunch."

Lululemon's original fabric, Luon, with a high proportion of nylon microfibers rather than a more typical polyester blend, was registered in the United States in 2005. Many of its newer fabrics are branded and designed for specific uses. Luxtreme is a stretchy, moisture-wicking fabric designed to fit like a second skin. Nuluz is a compression fabric intended for sweatier workouts. Silverescent is sold as Lululemon's "odor-fighting technology," using silver bonded to the surface of fibers to prevent bacteria from reproducing. A T-shirt made with that material costs USD 68.

Competitor leggings in the market use a similar strategy, promoting versatile pants through combinations of fabrics. For Adidas, the pants feature fabrics such as sweat-wicking Climalite or Climacool and thermal-regulating Climawarm material to adapt to training conditions. Likewise, Nike's Dri-Fit material keeps sweat at bay. Even Target's C9 brand fitness collection combines performance fabrics: Freedom Fabric is a polyester-spandex blend designed for liestyle or fitness, while its Embrace fabric hugs the body for a cozier feel.

What was once a simple stretchy legging, it seems, hasn't become an engineering marvel. It's not too surprising, however, when you realize that each year consumers spend an estimated $48 billion on sportswear in the United States.

An innovative product made by a startup that is gobbled up or crushed by America's corporate giants is an old story. Lululemon is determined not to let that happen this time.

Tucked away in the basement of its Vancouver headquarters is a lab called Whitespace, the research and development company. Here, a team of around 50 employees work to create the brand's next big idea. It has developed lightweight seamless bras and yoga pants made from combinations of repurposed yarns typically used in lingerie. The staff is not just made up of textile workers tasked with making new fabrics. It includes scientists, physiologists, mechanical engineers, neuroscientists, and biomechanists.

Tom Waller, a Ph.D. in sports technology whose job has been to test everything from Olympic swimming to World Cup soccer, runs Whitespace. When it opened 6 years ago, the research and development center aimed to explore what the company calls "science of feeling" and better understand sensory experiences. "The mission at the time was to take some of our talent a little further into the future to explore human behavior and the macro trends that are changing around us," he noted.

The yoga pants are tangible, but Waller aspires to the ethereal. He talks about the "spectrum of sensory experiences and desires" when describing the different types of fabric Lululemon sells. "We unpack the physical, emotional, and mental components of what it is to be human," Waller said, "and then we drive the different sensory experiences."

Alexandra Plante, director of innovation management at Whitespace, is responsible for taking what she calls "duct tape prototypes" and turning them into actual products. With a background in materials engineering, she delves into fabrics, yarns, and polymers. Years ago, research was limited to focus groups and feedback from store associates asking their shoppers. Now there are fabric labs, especially in the sports wear space. Lululemon's research arm conducts motion capture tests and uses pressure sensors that allow researchers to test how garments work as they move. The team can even test "hand feel" to help figure out how to "create feel" for that critical business moment when the fabric is first felt.

When Lululemon was selling nothing but Luon, the company saw customers use the pants for all kinds of workouts, including high-intensity training that the fabric was never intended for. So, after R&D identified how consumers were wearing them and for what, Lululemon developed material specific to each activity, hence the creation of pants for runners or dancers. Even Luon itself, the company's original fabric, is different than it was 20 years ago, after years of tweaking and integrating new technology.

This watch-and-learn strategy became a virtuous circle, helping the craze turn into a commercial earthquake.

Mistakes have been made, including one that was inherently and spectacularly dire. In 2013, Lululemon recalled the pants for being too thin, attributing the see-through problem to a manufacturing error. The subsequent destruction of the pants resulted in a loss of USD 67 million in sales. Choe said that problem has now been resolved.

Now that it has a spectrum of products suitable for most every move, Lululemon has opened a couple of stores for those customers interested in still experimental items. One of them, located in midtown Manhattan (the other in Vancouver), looks more like a fashion boutique than a place to buy equipment for the gym or yoga studio.

Yoga, as you might imagine, was fine for thousands of years without a stretchy uniform. The rise of yoga pants owes a lot to simple timing. Lululemon burst onto the scene at the tail end of the (perhaps unfortunate) leggings revolution, just as long-term trends were leaning toward something more casual.

The practice of yoga, a trio of physical, mental, and spiritual disciplines involving specific postures and movements with origins in ancient India, first became popular as an exercise system in the West in the 1980s. It was dropped for a while, only to come back more commercialized than ever in the early 2000s. A 2016 Yoga Journal study found that more than 36 million people in the United States practice yoga, up from 16 million eight years ago. She followed boutique fitness, while women (and a few men) flocked to the new studios to work out in groups for SoulCycle spin classes, sweat it out at Barry's Bootcamp, or sculpt their cores at Pure Barre. None of these expensive fads have anything to do with yoga in practice, but yoga clearly blazed a trail for them, and the clothes their followers wear.

Major companies in the industry have invested heavily in growing their womenswear lines, especially in developing new fabrics and features for the once-simple yoga pant. In 2014, Nike Inc. began working toward a $7 billion sales target for its women's business, reporting nearly $5 billion in revenue. Executives realized that women were "driving a larger global health and fitness movement." A year later, the company reported that global business growth for women was outpacing that for men. That same year, Adidas AG began targeting its youth brand, Neo, towards younger women. The German sports giant even hired Christine Day, former CEO of Lululemon, as a strategic adviser.

Adidas quickly became a threat to Lululemon's dominance. The first steps became exclusive designs for women through the PureBoost X line, which led to an even greater emphasis on active tops and bottoms, using technology called Climachill and Techfit, both focused on training women. Last year, Adidas sales of products aimed at women grew 28 percent, making it one of the company's strongest segments.

Active bottoms and leggings are now a $1 billion industry, according to analyst Marshal Cohen of the NPD Group. Its appeal to consumers has produced rapid sales growth that shows no signs of abating. Where Lululemon found success with female consumers by providing a niche product that could cater to both casual and active uses, major brands like Adidas and Nike rounded out the picture, confirming just how strong the training trend could be.

These days, there are already more than 11,000 types of yoga-specific pants available at retailers around the world, according to data from retail research firm Edited, for both men and women.

"Now that this easy-to-fit, easy-to-find, easy-to-use and easy-to-care-for product has also become a fashion item, it's the perfect storm," Cohen said. "You have to be doing something very wrong to not be successful with this type of product."