Upon entering “Lululemon” and “Black girls” in TikTok’s search bar, scores of videos come up featuring enthusiastic try-on hauls and positive reviews of items from the athleisure company. The posts range from June of this year to late 2023.
What’s ironic is that in November 2023, a bombshell report from the Business Of Fashion revealed that the company was complicit in creating a racist culture for employees, per their own admission, and ultimately wanted no parts of Black consumership.
“They said that Blackness was off-brand for the company,” Konesha Armstrong tells ESSENCE. She was a sales lead for a Chicago-based Lululemon location in Hyde Park, a neighborhood that boasts a large Black population. The store was closed in 2023 after being open for less than two years despite consistent sales, she says.
Armstrong was one of the 14 employees that spoke out about the company’s troubling actions toward its workers of color.
The deep dive report was boosted by celebrities, picked up other by outlets and widely shared on social media. Yet and still, some Black women still unashamedly patronize and promote the brand.
“We’re our own worst enemy,” Armstrong tells ESSENCE. “The Black community will see blatant disrespect from brands but will continue to put money in the pockets of companies who don’t want anything to do with them. As long as we continue to support them, it’s never going to change. Balenciaga is going to continue to reign. As long as Lil Wayne wears it, as long as Kim Kardashian wears it, as long as Kanye keeps wearing it, the community is going to think it’s okay to wear it.”
Brand specialist Rhea Skinner agrees.
“It’s so layered from a psychological standpoint,” she tells ESSENCE. “You have your consumers that buy into the pretentiousness of a luxury brand and want to be able to have a status symbol on their back regardless of what that really means. It’s a tale as old as time.”
From Prada’s Little Black Sambo bag charm, Dolce&Gabbana’s anti-Asian remarks to Tommy Hilfiger’s racism claims, fashion brands continually make missteps regarding racial insensitivity toward the Black community despite an almost blind loyalty from the group.
As previously reported by ESSENCE, in October 2022 LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE raked in one of its highest sales months despite the International Monetary Fund‘s warning of a worsening outlook for the global economy. Their report highlighted a continual rising in inflation rates and likely hiring freezes on the horizon.
As assertion can be made that this consistent growth in the sector can be linked to Black consumers specifically. Black shoppers accounted for 20 percent of luxury spend in the US market in 2019 — a number that’s forecasted to increase by 25 to 30 percent by 2025, according to a Bain report.
Skinner, who is a publicist that has worked with various fashion brands including Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, says this loyalty is unsurprising.
“Collectively, we are the only people, and I hate to say it this way, that don’t stand in our true power,” she tells ESSENCE. “We can roll our eyes at other racial groups all day long, but right, wrong, or indifferent, they are standing 10 toes down on what they believe in. If a company doesn’t treat them right, they ice them out.”
Armstrong traces the Black shopping loyalty back to systemic racism and how the community was often barred from being able to purchase fine goods in department stores.
“It runs deep, and I think we still think we have something to prove when buying supporting these ‘quiet luxury’ brands despite them showing us their true colors,” she tells ESSENCE. “But we have to really stand on business when we see some stuff isn’t right. And we have to really take our buying power back because they don’t make these clothes for us.” To her point, a 2024 McKinsey report stated that Black consumers’ collective economic power is set to expand dramatically, from about $910 billion in consumption in 2019 to $1.7 trillion (in nominal dollars) in 2030.
Despite this, Armstrong says companies still have a very long way to go when serving the Black consumer.
“Every store that I’ve ever worked at, Topshop, Topman, Bloomingdale’s—they strictly make clothes for the European stature, they’re not for us. And we spend so much money forcing ourselves into these brands or into these spaces when it’s obvious they don’t want us there. It’s time that we realize how powerful we are.”