“Same soulless vibes. Fewer fossil fuels.” So says the website for Mumumelon, a new project that made exact dupes of Lululemon staples like hoodies and yoga pants—but with renewable energy and a detailed plan to cut emissions.
Inside a fake pop-up store in London in late March, a fake employee gave customers the pitch: “We stole Lululemon’s designs and made them less terrible for the environment.”
“We’ve been campaigning on Lululemon for a few years now to push them to invest in the renewable energy transition and phase out fossil fuels from their supply chain,” says Ruth MacGilp, a climate campaigner at the advocacy group Action Speaks Louder. “We wanted to do something a bit more creative.” (Lululemon said in a statement that it was “disappointed” with the nonprofit’s approach.)
The website lays out the basic challenge: like most clothing brands, Lululemon’s emissions keep going up. The company committed to transition to renewable electricity at factories, in part after pressure from Action Speaks Louder. But it has moved slowly, and missed a goal to reach 25% renewable electricity last year. Electricity also isn’t the only problem. The majority of its emissions actually come from heat used in industrial processes at factories, MacGlip says, including boilers that run on coal.
“The majority of energy is actually in the form of process heat, and in fashion generally that comes from burning fossil fuels to generate hot water and steam,” she says. “The alternative to fossil fuels for heat is using electricity, but what has to happen first is those processes have to be electrified through technologies like heat pumps and electric boilers. And that’s not yet common practice in the fashion industry. It’s commercially available technology, but it hasn’t yet scaled.”
The group argues that as a major brand, with $11 billion in sales last year, Lululemon can afford to move faster. The company positions itself as committed to sustainability, and it’s something that its core customers care about. The campaign targeted yoga influencers, who’ve started tagging the company in posts saying how disappointed they are.
“We hope that helps put it higher up the priority list than if it was just us as a nonprofit saying the same thing,” says MacGlip, who says that she’s had a meeting with the company since the campaign launched.
In its statement, Lululemon defended its sustainability work, saying that it is “continuing to make meaningful progress” on its goals. “Climate action and worker wellbeing are key focus areas for us, and we have achieved a 60% absolute reduction of greenhouse emissions in our owned and operated facilities. We recognize most of our climate impact comes from emissions in our broader supply chain. We are investing in scaling environmental solutions across our shared supply chain and advancing circular innovation with a focus on making our products with preferred materials, such as recycled nylon and polyester.”
A creative agency called Serious People created the fake brand and store for the campaign as a way to engage people more than a typical dry report. “It’s hard for someone online to share a piece of content that says, ‘This company is really bad for the environment,’” says Oli Frost, the satirist behind the campaign. “It’s easy to share something that just says, ‘Hey, they did this thing—Mumumelon.”
The biggest challenge, he says, is that people actually wanted to buy the clothing when they found out how it was made. “They were a little bit disappointed when I said they couldn’t buy anything,” he says. “But obviously, for legal reasons, we were advised not to place the clothing on sale.”