Chip Wilson

There are few things as effective as the Olympics at bringing this country together, helping create moments of national mythology that have become so engraved within our collective memory that they almost define who we are as Canadians. And quite often, those memories are defined in part by the uniforms our athletes wear at the Games. 

Thins of the 1976 Olympians in Montreal in classic ‘70s large-collared shirts, wide-legged pants, and bucket hats. , the Alberta tassel-fringed cowboy outfits our athletes wore at the Calgary Games in 1988, the famous poor boy caps for Nagano in 1988, or the  2010 Vancouver athletes who sported the red parka and mittens that almost every Canadian family seems to have lying around somewhere. In recent decades,  Canada’s outfits have been designed by one of three major Canadian clothing companies: Roots, the Hudson's Bay Company, and more recently,  Lululemon, the company that changed the global culture regarding athletic wear founded by Canada’s very own Chip Wilson.

Born in 1955 in Los Angeles to an American mother and Canadian father, both of Wilson’s parents exposed him to athletics and to clothing from a very young age. With his father being a hockey and football player and his mother a gymnast who also worked as a seamstress to bring in extra money for the family, Wilson was seemingly destined to build Lululemon into the cultural icon it is now.

When Chip was five, the family moved from L.A. to his father’s hometown of Calgary.. At age 18, in 1973, Wilson headed north to Edmonton to study and play football for the University of Alberta. But he soon left Edmonton, eventually graduating in 1980 from the University of Calgary with a degree in economics after a short stint in Alaska working in the oil industry.

But Wilson didn't even wait until graduation to start his entrepreneurial career. In 1979 he founded the sports retail company known as Westbeach Snowboard Ltd. which focused on apparel for snowboarders, surfers, and skateboarders. He owned the company until 1997, at which point he sold it for $15 million. The next year he founded the company that made his reputation and his fortune, Lululemon Athletica. 

Opening its first storefront in the Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver in 2000, the brand specialized in the creation of high-end yoga pants and other yoga wear, expanding into the broader space of casual athletic wear. This put Lululemon at the centre of the global explosion in athleisure as consumers everywhere demanded clothing that would seamlessly blend between athletic performance and day-to-day casual. Wilson remained as  CEO of the company until 2005 when he sold a 48% stake to the private equity companies Advent International and Highland Capital Partners. Under this deal, Wilson remained on the Lululemon board and kept the position of the company's chief innovation and branding officer, a job he held until late 2013. Wilson eventually resigned from the board in early 2015, formally ending his time with the company, though he continues to make public his views about the company, its policies, and products.

Since leaving Lululemon, Wilson has remained involved in philanthropy and entrepreneurship, especially within the arts and culture communities in British Columbia. This includes a donation of $100 million to the BC Parks foundation for biodiversity conservation, and has provided funding for numerous public art installations around Vancouver, such as A-maze-ing Laughter in Morton Park and Trans Am Totem near Granville Bridge. On top of this, the Wilson’s annual Child Run in Queen Elizabeth Park donates its proceeds to the British Columbia Children’s Hospital, and he and his wife opened The Chip and Shannon Wilson School of Design at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Richmond with the mandate of innovating and solidifying the future of BC's technical apparel industry. Wilson even bought back the rights to Westbeach, and has opened a new storefront in Kitsilano.

At the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milano-Cortina, Canadian athletes will bring all the grit, determination, and ambition this country is known for, against the best competitors in the world. Some will bring home medals, many will achieve personal bests, still others will fail to meet the moment despite their best training and effort. That’s the drama of the Olympics.  But they will all do themselves and the country proud, while clad in the Team Canada uniform of quilted vests and knee-length jackets, designed and produced once again by Lululemon. 

Chip Wilson, and the company that still reflects his vision and creativity, have shown that brands can not only just become national icons, but can transform global culture in ways thought unimaginable.