Cold snow, hot takes: Lululemon Olympics gear

Whenever Team Canada laces up its skates and clips on its skis for another Olympics, fans back home become armchair critics — and it's not just the performances they're judging.

Whenever Team Canada laces up its skates and clips on its skis for another Olympics, fans back home become armchair critics — and it’s not just the performances they’re judging.

The last few Games have shown that Canadians love to hate their team’s uniform. They griped about the graffiti-inspired jean jackets Hudson’s Bay made for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and compared the pattern on some of the red-and-white pieces in Lululemon Athletica Inc.’s collection for the 2024 Paris Games to uncooked bacon.

This year, they’re likening the maroon and red colour scheme Lululemon is using for the uniform to a Tim Hortons cup and complaining that a puffy, shawl-like vest the team wore at the opening ceremony was akin to a sleeping bag or oversized oven mitt.

But experts say none of that criticism really matters because outfitters don’t hang much of their business on these Olympic collections.

They’re usually produced in smaller quantities, sold for a short period of time and treated more like a marketing tool or product test bed than a major brand builder.

“As long as the conversation is about the esthetic and not about the quality, fit or functionality for athletes, it’s not a negative thing,” said Lisa Hutcheson, a retail strategist with J.C. Williams Group.

“I wouldn’t be stressing over it if I was Lululemon.”

This year’s Olympic collection is the third from the Vancouver-based apparel retailer, which did not respond to a request for comment. It features a darker palette of reds, maroons and glacier-inspired blue-greens and makes use of a topographical map of Canada in some of the designs.