WHEN IT COMES to performance apparel, most brands promise the same thing: supposedly groundbreaking fabrics, smarter designs and gear that works as hard as you do. No brand is saying their products are “just fine”, they all declare they’re the absolute best. Inside the research and innovation labs at lululemon, the focus is less about making these sweeping statements and more about something they call the “science of feel.”
“The idea is to bring a depth of scientific understanding to how we build functionality and performance within our products,” says Chantelle Murnaghan, lululemon’s VP of Research and Product Innovation. “But we combine that with a feel-first perspective.”
For Murnaghan, that phrase is central to how the brand approaches design. Functionality alone isn’t enough, the experience of wearing the product is just as important as the technical performance built into the garment. “It’s about delivering unparalleled performance from a functional perspective,” she explains, “but also creating an experience in the product that no other brand creates.”
That balance requires a meticulous approach to product development. Rather than focusing on a single performance metric like breathability or durability, lululemon treats each piece as a complex system. “We bring that scientific perspective and think about every single ingredient that combines to deliver the perfect product recipe and the perfect product experience,” Murnaghan says.
Those “ingredients” include everything from fabric construction and fibre composition to seam placement, stretch properties and overall fit. Every element has a role to play in how the final product performs. But the science doesn’t happen in isolation.
One of the defining features of lululemon’s design process is the role athletes play in shaping the products themselves. lululemon boasts an impressive suite of ambassadors, with big names like Lewis Hamilton among them. But instead of simply endorsing finished gear, these ambassadors are heavily involved early in development, helping designers identify gaps and refine prototypes.
“There’s a few different ways we work with athletes,” Murnaghan says. “We gather qualitative insights from them – how they feel when they’re using our products and whether there are unmet needs that we can solve.”
Sometimes that feedback comes directly from testing sessions in lululemon’s research labs, where athletes move through workouts while wearing early prototypes. “On the product creation side, we’ll have prototypes on them while they’re moving so they can give detailed feedback,” she says. “That allows us to understand how the product behaves in real-world motion.”
That iterative process reflects another guiding principle for the brand: performance and aesthetics should never be treated as competing priorities. “We focus on the balance between high style and high performance,” she says. “Those are always held as equal for us.”
That philosophy reflects a changing relationship with performance apparel. Training gear is no longer something people only wear during workouts. Increasingly, it needs to function across multiple parts of modern life: the gym, the commute, the coffee run and everything in between.
Designing for that reality requires more than technical fabrics. It requires a deep understanding of how people move, train and live. For lululemon, that understanding starts not just with science, but with feel.
Ahead of the 2026 Australian Grand Prix, lululemon released the Lewis Hamilton edit – a curated capsule collection of the pieces Hamilton actually wears and trains in. If you want to cop the collection, head to lululemon Emporium or shop online at lululemon.com.au.
Here are some of our favourite pieces from the collection.
