Lululemon has had a lot of explaining to do over its recent recall of black yoga pants that are a bit too sheer to wear in public. In a conference call today with Wall Street analysts wondering how this all happened, Lululemon’s CEO said basically that no one put the pants through the “bend over while wearing them” test.

The see-through bottoms affected about 17% of its stock, resulting in a shortage customers might feel when they go shopping.

Thus far the company pointed fingers at one of its suppliers for the Luon fabric snafu. It’s quite a problematic issue for the company — after all, it’s only able to sell high-end workout gear because of its reputation for quality. But CEO Christine Day says the pants passed all the usual tests except for one.

“The truth of the matter is the only way you can actually test for the issue is to put the pants on and bend over,” she said on the call, reports Bloomberg. “Just putting the pants on themselves doesn’t solve the problem. It passed all of the basic metric tests and the hand-feel is relatively the same, so it was very difficult for the factories to isolate the issue, and it wasn’t until we got in the store and started putting it on people that we could actually see the issue.”

Experts point to the fact that the pants had to get on customers’ rear ends before anyone spotted the problem as a potential flaw in how the company’s supply chain works. Basically, it’s kind of ridiculous.

The jury is still out on what makes the Luon fabric too sheer, but Day says there are “several hypotheses.”

Lululemon Sheer Yoga Pants Undetected Until Bend-Over Test [Bloomberg]

 

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