A Texas woman went to purchase a Lululemon jacket. Then, employees took the jacket right out of her hands. They gave her a stained item in return after 20 minutes of waiting around for the item with a tag.
Keke Jones (@keketherealmsjones), the woman accusing the store of racial profiling, directly addressed the store when saying, “ Lululemon, if y’all don’t want us in there, just put a sign on the door, [and] tell the truth. Because I shouldn’t be having to spend this much money to be racially profiled.”
Jones’s experience trying to buy a Lululemon jacket
Jones went inside Lululemon, presumably located in Memorial City Mall in Houston, Texas, to purchase a jacket. She was chatting with store associates while trying to make a purchase.
While holding the item in her hand, a different employee took it from her. They briefly explained that it didn’t have a tag and ran to the back of the store. The other associate apologized on his behalf, but Jones ultimately waited for 20 minutes. When the other employee who had originally grabbed her jacket returned, she immediately noticed that he didn’t bring her the jacket she had picked out.
Instead, he was offering her another jacket with a stain on it and told her that he had brought it from the back. Jones pointed this out, but the man explained that he wanted her to trade the other jacket for this one.
Eventually, though, he went to the back of the store again, this time taking the stained jacket and replacing it with what she assumed was the original jacket she intended to buy. She then noticed that the original jacket had a tag on it the entire time.
“ Y’all, I have never been racial profiled in my life. The [male employee’s] name was Chase. It was horrible. The lady was like, she was, she was apologizing. From how I was just treated. She was apologizing,” Jones said.
What, if anything, led up to the incident with the Lululemon jacket?
Jones explained toward the end of her video that she wasn’t necessarily dressed to shop for the Lululemon jacket that day. While that isn’t a reason for her to be given the runaround, she did notice some strange things from the moment she walked into the store.
For one, she thought that “Chase” was watching her the entire time she was shopping. She noticed this when entering the store, although it only became a problem when he tried to replace the jacket she picked out with a worse alternative.
Ultimately, the situation made Jones feel weird and uncomfortable, especially considering Lululemon’s high prices and what she was willing to spend on the jacket.
Lululemon—a history of incidents related to racial profiling
There have been longstanding calls to boycott Lululemon due to racial profiling incidents. In 2024, A woman in New York was accused of shoplifting after purchasing around $600 of clothing from the store. An employee allegedly called the NYPD, who later confronted the woman.
Chip Wilson, Lululemon’s founder, also gave a controversial interview calling attention to the company’s DEI efforts. He referred to models for the company as “sickly” and “uninspirational,” with many of those models being people of color.
Even recently, Lululemon has had racial profiling incidents. A woman accused the company of profiling her and not allowing her to return an item she purchased in Louisiana to a New York store. Notably, employees used language as “the person you got it from,” instead of referring to the store she purchased the leggings from. To many, that was a dead giveaway that the employees thought she stole the items and attempted a fake return.
Was this actually an incident of racial profiling?
Many people were questioning where the supposed racial profiling occurred in Jones’s case, as while she did have a poor experience with the store, the incident, according to many, could have happened to anyone.
‘When did the racial part happen? Sounds like he took the jacket thinking it had no tag to go grab one that did,” wrote one commenter.
Others agreed, saying, “As a previous manager for lululemon, we have to create new tags for products missing one. It really is like a 10 [minute] process. Friend it ain’t always what it seems.”
Jones, however, reflected on the situation and decided that she wants to return the jacket. “Y’all , really got me thinking. I should take it back. I just never been in a situation like that before so I really didn’t know how to handle it,” she told her commenters.
Other commenters agreed, saying the situation proved that Lululemon didn’t serve people of color (POC) the same way it served white people. Some even called Jones trying to shop in the store the “definition of insanity,” considering the store has such a negative reputation.
@keketherealmsjones Bad business at the memorial Center location! @lululemon ♬ original sound – keketherealmsjones
The Mary Sue has reached out to Jones and Lululemon for comment.
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