Lululemon Run Fast Crop & Run Hills Pullover Power Purple

I was browsing the Lululemon website yesterday and decided to order the new Run Fast Crop. It arrived today.

These crops are very similar to my Passion Crops from Lulu. From the pocket on the left thigh to the lines on the rear end view.  Even the seam going down the front of the legs are the same as the Passion Crop.  I'm not sure why the front picture of the Fast Crop on the model looks like she may have a diaper butt.  They could have pulled it up an inch on her and still without creating camel toe.  Right now it looks like there's a long distance between her crotch and belly button and it looks odd to me and makes her legs look shorter. 

The Fast Crop are the same rise and fit similarly to the Passion Crop, comes up to about half an inch below my belly button.  But the Fast Crops are longer by an inch - exactly the same length as my Team Spirit Crops.  I really love the length of my Passion Crop as they hit me right below my knees, but I don't mind the length of the Fast Crop either since the bottom can also be sort of bunched up a little and end up being about the same length anyway.  Where the Passion Crops have a banded hem on the leg opening, the Fast Crop have just a regular hem, but with circle mesh on the back and these decorative pleats on the sides.  I tried to find a purpose for these pleats, but I had to come to the conclusion that they are purely decorative.  At first I thought the material under the pleats were also circle mesh like the back of the leg, which would mean the pleats would act like a venting system.  But it's luxtreme underneath them.  So it actually just adds more weight since it's basically double layered luxtreme material.  Not significantly of course, they are still very light.  But I'm just saying.  Maybe I'm missing something.

The side pocket placement and size is exactly the same as my Passion Crop, except the two silver lines alongside the zipper are reflective.  There are also two hidden pockets on the front sides of the waistband, whereas the Passion Crops don't have any.  I find it to be a nice feature because I always struggled with where to put my ipod during my runs when I wore the Passion Crop (too big to fit in the little pocket on the thigh).  

I think the biggest improvement of the Fast Crop over the Passion Crop is that the waistband is MUCH wider!  As I said before, the rise is exactly the same, but the waistband itself is about an inch wider on the Fast Crop (about half an inch wider than Team Spirit Crop and more than an inch wider than the Empower Crop), which makes a big difference as far as how it flatters the figure.  I always wondered why Lululemon doesn't put wider waistband on their run crops, like the same width as their yoga pants.  I find skinnier waistbands to sometimes cut my hips off wrong and tend to look more like "old women jeans" which is not a look I'd go for.  A wider waistband definitely covers the side "love handle" area issues, and makes the hips a smooth curve.

Still not sure if that is enough to justify keeping these when I have two pairs of Passion Crop already that are black with different colored waistbands.  Maybe I'll exchange these for the grey/alarming pair.  Or maybe I'll just return them and wait till more colors come out.  

I also was very surprised to have found a Run:Hills Pullover in Power Purple in my size on the Lulu website!  

I know that this is an older item, and I have the Run Hills Pullover in Heathered Ivory Stripe.  But that one is luxtreme, and the power purple one is made of running luon.  I don't wear my luxtreme Hills Pullover because I always tend to gravitate towards my running luons pullovers, though I really like the fit of the Hills Pullover.  Now that I think about it, it's one of the most well designed Lululemon pieces I've ever owned.  Similar to my Run Energy Pullover but I feel like it's tighter fitting (especially in the chest) and more slimming.  So needless to say, I just had to grab the power purple one!  It's like the best of both worlds.  Plus I love purple and can never have enough purple tops!  And I just realized that the stripe details on this pullover matches exactly the waistband of my power purple Passion Crop as pictured above.

The only problem is, it arrived with the tag unattached, and it doesn't have thumb holes.  What the...?!?  My luxtreme Hills Pullover has thumb holes, and I thought all Lulu pullovers had thumb holes.  Did the running luon version of the Hills Pullover not come with thumb holes??  

I'm now thinking that it must have been a defective item / return from a long time ago.  I knew it was too good to be true that I happened to stumble upon it and it was the only one they had and happened to be my size!  Because as soon as I placed my order, it was gone from the website.  As far as I can tell, nothing else is wrong with it.  But I paid full price for it (which in itself is annoying since it's an older item but I'm a sucker! What else can I say.), and it just irks me if it is indeed a defective.  The thumb holes are kind of an important detail to have since I do use the feature when I'm running.  If this was a jacket then I could overlook it.  I need to get to the bottom of this.  Maybe I'll call Lulu and ask them, and if it really should have thumb holes, maybe they can give me a discount or credit.  And then maybe I can take it to a store to see if their seamstress can cut 2 holes.  But it would be tricky since they may not know the correct length and placement of the thumb holes and it might end up looking really bad or unfinished.  I don't have much confidence in their seamstress from prior experience when they totally f'ed up sewing a short, straight line with simple stitching on my Dance Studio pants, seriously it looked like a 2 year old did it and I could have done a better job sewing by hand.  Grrrr!!!