See-Through Lululemon Yoga Pants Lead to Recall

                                                 A Lululemon store in Tokyo. Photo by Tiger Mask via Flickr

For fans of Lululemon yoga pants, one thing is clear—some of the popular retailer’s clothing was recently recalled for being too transparent.

Officials from Lululemon Athletica pulled thousands of products from their stores this week after discovering that certain styles of women’s bottoms that used black Luon fabric were see-through.

“The ingredients, weight and longevity qualities of the pants remain the same but the coverage does not, resulting in a level of sheerness in some of our women’s black Luon bottoms that falls short of our very high standards,” the company said in a March 18 statement.

The company pulled all of the merchandise from the shelves and e-commerce sites, amounting to roughly 17 percent of all women’s bottoms in their stores, which they predicted will create a temporary shortage of the specific yoga pants. According to a statement from the company, the manufacturing company that produces the yoga pants has not changed, so Lululemon representatives are still not sure what caused the material to become see-through.

Lululemon anticipates that the product shortage and recall will hurt their 2013 sales by as much as 3 percent, or roughly $17 million. “We expect this issue will have a significant impact on our financial results,” the company says in a statement. “We are working to determine the impact on our earnings in the first quarter as well as expected impact for the balance of 2013.”

Calls to the Lululemon stores on Newbury Street and in the Pru were not immediately returned.

Despite the setback, however, local yoga shop owner Jill Koontz, who runs Bikram Yoga Boston in the Back Bay, says that based on the popularity of the company, the defunct product probably won’t hurt Lululemon in the long run. “I think if you are a Lululemon devotee, there will be some disappointment,” Koontz says. “If you love that line, you will love that line, but I wouldn’t say it will hurt them too badly.”

Koontz says that many of her clients regularly turn to Lululemon when buying clothing for classes, but so far today, following the news about the see-through pants, no clients have complained.

Yoga instructors adjusting clients on the other hand, may have a different opinion.