- Hamilton will promote Lululemon’s menswear range
- Mission 44 will work with the company to promote fairer futures for young people
- Lululemon previously partnered with ex-Formula One driver Zhou Guanyu in China
Lululemon has named Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton as its newest ambassador, marking the athleisure brand’s biggest move into motorsport.
Hamilton will collaborate with Lululemon on future products and the company will also work with the seven-time world champion’s Mission 44 charity to integrate movement and mental health experiences into their efforts to build a fairer future for young people through education, employment and empowerment.
“Lululemon product is such high quality, looks amazing, and ultimately delivers the performance I need it to,” said Hamilton.
“I’m excited to partner with a brand that embraces a holistic approach to wellness. Together, we want to inspire our communities to be the best versions of themselves.”
Hamilton’s role as a brand ambassador will include a particular focus on promoting Lululemon’s menswear range, with the Canadian-headquartered company historically associated with women’s athletic apparel.
In an interview with GQ, Hamilton admitted that he “didn’t actually know they were doing men’s” prior to his ambassadorial role.
Lululemon has previously partnered with ex-Formula One driver Zhou Guanyu, who is now Ferrari’s reserve driver for the 2025 season, though that deal was specifically targeted at the Chinese market.
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The signing of Hamilton, a champion of the Black Lives Matter movement and who continues to push for greater diversity in motorsport, comes after Lululemon’s founder and former chief executive Chip Wilson expressed his distaste for the company’s “whole diversity and inclusion thing” in an interview with Forbes in 2024.
Wilson stepped down from Lululemon’s board of directors in 2015, having attracted criticism in 2013 for saying “some women’s bodies just actually don’t work” for the company’s products.
While Lululemon has distanced itself from Wilson’s comments over the years, a report by the Business of Fashion in 2023 claimed the company’s diversity and inclusion programme was performative, rather than enacting any real change. Current and former Lululemon employees interviewed by the Business of Fashion collectively described a corporate culture that was unwelcoming of Black people.
Prior to that, Business Insider reported in 2021 that days after the murder of George Floyd, a high-level Lululemon manager told a team of designers and copywriters she wanted to put ‘all lives matter’ at the top of Lululemon’s website. The slogan is widely regarded as a criticism of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.
BlackBook says…
Securing Hamilton as a brand ambassador, who has become increasingly vocal on issues around diversity and racism, is the latest sign of a company trying to leave its past controversies behind.
Evidently, Hamilton has been convinced by Lululemon’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts to sign on with the brand. His decision is a major coup for the company. Indeed, there are few sportspeople with the global appeal of Hamilton, with motorsport’s most marketable athlete in SportsPro’s 2024 list of the world’s 50 Most Marketable (50MM) athletes having the rare distinction of transcending the sport in which he competes.
This will help Lululemon not only in its efforts to raise awareness of its menswear range, but in ensuring it can be viewed as a modern, forward-thinking brand that has truly evolved from its past associations.
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