The real price of Lululemon-style luxury

Visit the nearest campus gym and you’ll likely find ladies — and gentlemen — sporting Lululemon Athletica.

The company famous for its up to $130 yoga pants has entered the pantheon of hyper-expensive status symbols with its sporty and wealthy cult following.

Unfortunately, Lululemon is also part of another elite club of retailers — one that has openly stated its clothes are not for everyone.

This means bigger customers, or anyone larger than a size 12.

The company drew an expected firestorm for admitting to what many retailers already do, sell a specific lifestyle.

On a college campus, fashion is rarely a reflection of personal style but rather an indicator of group identity.

Whether it’s Abercrombie or Urban Outfitters, companies make billions each year off consumers wishing to buy not just clothes but an entire identity.

Take Vineyard Vines. Even though a small fraction of Americans actually summer at Martha’s Vineyard, the clothes have become a rage on college campuses.

Not because of cutting-edge style or supreme quality in its products, but because of its association with a bastion of the American elite — even if most who wear the brand have never been on a boat.

Companies like Lululemon also increase the perceived value of their brands through the exclusion of large parts of the population.

If you’re not wealthy, skinny or at the gym enough, chances are you won’t be in a $130 pair of their yoga pants.

But if you are, you’ve automatically bought an identifier of the aforementioned privilege, whether you actually have it or not. And you’ve done so at the price of $130.

This sort of branding is gimmicky at best and corrosive at worst.

Though the argument most often used against this byproduct of consumerism is that it shames people for the life or body they were born into, it’s not the argument I find most compelling.

What I find most troubling is that it encourages an absence of taste and erodes any semblance of personal style.

That does not mean wanting to fit in is wrong. In the Internet age, it’s natural for us to want to localize our identity. What is troubling is the extent to which we’re willing to go to do so.

Questioning what we’re being sold and, more important, why we’re buying it should be something we as consumers constantly ask.

You can pay for clothes, but you can’t buy a life.

­— edsalas@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Eduardo Salas on Twitter @seibbe.