Uniqlo SS15: ’Tis the season for exciting collabs
Ines de la Fressange, Nigo and MoMA artists have joined creative forces with Uniqlo to create ‘lifewear’ made for all.
NEW YORK CITY, NY — Uniqlo, the Japanese global brand obsessed with creating the perfect fashion basics, unveiled its spring/summer 2015 collection on Nov. 18 in New York City, and it’s a season of exciting collaborations with celebrity designers and modern artists, as well as technical innovations for the brand.
Nigo, the Bathing Ape founder responsible for turning streetwear into coveted luxury items, has created over 1,000 T-shirt designs for Uniqlo’s UT collection, featuring graphics from such pop-culture phenomena as Hello Kitty, Tintin, Superman, Ghostbusters and Wu-Tang Clan.
Parisian style icon Ines de la Fressange has teamed with Uniqlo a third time to come up with a linen collection inspired by the region she was born in, the South of France.
Uniqlo’s SPRZ NY (Surprise New York) line of art-inspired apparel has added not only new products from mainstay artists Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, but also new collaborations with Museum of Modern Art stars Aleksandr Rodchenko, Sol LeWitt and Jennifer Bartlett.
This is not to mention Uniqlo’s core business of casual wear and outerwear. The brand’s extremely popular Ultra Light Down (ULD) collection has been made so water-repellent it stands up to rain, and a new high-tech fabric is being introduced: memory nylon, which is making its first appearance in the Pocketable Parka for men and women. “Memory nylon moves with your body and forms to your body and is water-repellent,” says LeAnn Nealz, chief creative officer of Uniqlo. “It’s an innovative new techie fabric.”
The new model t
As creative director for Uniqlo’s T-shirt line UT, Japanese streetwear designer Nigo has reinvented the T-shirt in his New Model T.
Speaking through a translator, he says that when he first started work at Uniqlo, he thought it was important to focus on the T-shirt itself, and tried to take it back to the classic American shape.
“The thing about this style of making shirts is that as you wear it, it becomes more adapted to your own body,” Nigo says. “I deliberately use a slightly rough cotton yarn and it kind of creates a little air gap between the T-shirt and your body so it’s more comfortable to wear.”
A pop-culture aficionado, Nigo develops more than 1,000 styles per collection “so this is representative,” and is sure to have something for everybody.
His personal favorite is surprisingly simple: a white T-shirt with a trompe l’oeil of a black tape measure hanging from the neck. “It’s an interesting new way of using prints this time,” he says, adding that it also honors the 20-year relationship he’s had with some of his clothes makers.
Asked how different it is working with Uniqlo from luxury brands A Bathing Ape and Billionaire Boys Club (on which he collaborated with Pharrell Williams), Nigo says, “It’s the difference between boxing and sumo. It’s sort of a similar world but the scale is totally different. I appreciate the global reach of Uniqlo.”
Style icon & natural woman
Uniqlo design director Naoki Takizawa remembers how they first joined forces with Ines de la Fressange: Uniqlo founder Tadashi Yanai came to him with one of her style books, and in it was a Uniqlo product. “That’s why Mr. Yanai chose her, because she brings to Uniqlo what the customer needs.”
As the former creative director for Issey Miyake, Takizawa was no stranger to high fashion. “It’s mass market but Uniqlo has its own original concept, not copying but innovating fabric and design,” he says. “That story is the same as Issey Miyake — always creating fabric and style but bringing something different to it.”
He also dreamed of designing for De La Fressange, but couldn’t since she was Chanel’s muse at the time. “Me and Ines became like brother and sister,” he laughs. When he went to Paris to meet her for the first time he didn’t need to explain Uniqlo’s concept of “made for all” or Lifewear because she already knew so much about the brand.
“At our first meeting she wore a tailored masculine shirt from India, a Prada jacket, Uniqlo jeans and Repetto ballet shoes,” he recalls. “I really like that sense of luxury — Uniqlo and ballet shoes.”
For Ines, what is most valuable for one’s lifestyle is not luxury or a brand or a designer, but clothing that “makes you feel free or more natural.”
Hence, the South of France inspired her third collection for Uniqlo and features natural fabrics and colors. “She wanted to bring that whole feeling in her, so you have linen materials, sand colors, flower prints, and button-down dresses,” says Mina Bishop, marketing director for Ines de la Fressange Paris.
Vintage prints feature prominently, as well as a white nylon jacket that would go well with De La Fressange’s favorite menswear shirts and cashmere sweaters from Uniqlo.
“She’s very timeless — the whole brand is based on timelessness,” Bishop says, “yet it’s unconventional. Ines really brought that back to Uniqlo.”
Producing the perfect products
An expert in comfortable clothing that you’d like to spend your life in — hence the term “lifewear” — Uniqlo is now blurring the lines between casual and sportswear with new products like the Pocketable Parka, Dry-Ex polo shirt, Bratop dress and Sweat Full Zip hoodie.
“They’re great pieces that are timeless and anybody can relate to,” says Nealz. “They suit one’s lifestyle, whether Heattech, AIRism, Ultra Light Down … they’re easy pieces that you can style up or down.”
Jeans like the Skinny Fit have been cut from a new fabric that makes them 20 percent lighter than other brands’. Before I left the Philippines for New York, COO of Fast Retailing Philippines Katsumi Kubota clued me in to the fact that the jeans that Uniqlo sells here for P1,990 are total bang for the buck because they’re made by Kaihara, a Japanese denim maker that supplies many luxury jeans brands. Kaihara denim is not only light and soft on the skin, it’s also 50 percent stretch with 90 percent recovery so it goes back to its original shape.
Easy-care features have been added to the men’s lightweight jackets and a Dry Stretch pants line developed with golfer Adam Scott. For women, there are easy-care rayon and georgette blouses, long sleeves and tank tops, while the bestselling Smart Style pants feature more colors and patterns with matching jackets.
Ultra Light Down (ULD), Uniqlo’s highly popular line of jackets and vests, has been tweaked to be even more water-repellent and comes in luscious candy colors for spring.
AIRism, garments made from a thin, light smooth material that absorbs moisture, enhanced its men’s mesh products with a new yarn that increases coolness and breathability, and controls odors from bacteria generated by drying laundry indoors. Women get added moisturizer for an even softer feel, built-in bra cups in the first half-sleeved Bratops, and more colors and patterns.
“We have to make the perfect single item and provide 100 percent good fabric, color and detail,” says Yuki Katsuta, head of research and design for Uniqlo Co. Ltd. and group senior vice president of Fast Retailing Co. Ltd. “To make really good fabric takes a couple of years. We talk about one-millimeter things that normal people don’t care about but we care to make the perfect silhouette, design, and style.”
“While fast-fashion brands think much more about collections and outfits, Uniqlo thinks more about products: the best T-shirts, the best jeans, the best cashmere sweaters,” agrees Jorgen Andersson, co-global chief marketing officer, Uniqlo Co. Ltd. and group officer, Fast Retailing Co. Ltd. “How they combine it is up to the consumer. We give them the toolbox.”
Andersson, who worked at H&M for almost 20 years, says Uniqlo is a hot commodity in Sweden, where the brand has yet to open a store. “My daughter, who’s 14, and mother-in-law, who’s 85, both said, ‘Could you go to Uniqlo and pick up a ULD down jacket for me?’ They wanted the same item but wear it completely differently up to now. I love ULD because it’s light, packable, warm, functional, and we put new designs into it, giving people reason to buy a new one,” he says.
Fifth avenue flagship
At Uniqlo’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, silhouettes of ULD jackets in neon are the stars of the Christmas display. With three floors, 1,500 square feet of selling space and a Starbucks café in-store, 4,000 to 5,000 customers come to shop every day.
Another holiday-season lure are the Daily Deals: today it’s knit sweaters at 50 percent off. “Corduroy is the main item we’re pushing this winter,” says store manager Anna B. “Also the down jackets and outerwear pieces.”
My personal favorite is the SPRZ NY section on the second floor, where artist shirts by Yayoi Kusama, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jackson Pollock are encased in glass, much like paintings are framed in a real gallery. I also love the UU collection for kids designed by Jun Takahashi, but $40 for a jacket that a child will outgrow in a few months? I settle for a cheaper pair of furry shorts for my daughter instead.
Y tu moma tambien
Uniqlo supports the arts, as can be gleaned from its SPRZ NY line, but we realize just how much at the neighboring Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The brand sponsors MoMA’s Free Friday Nights, where anyone can enter the museum free of charge between 4 to 8 p.m. on that day.
“We average 7,400 visitors per week,” notes Laura Kittredge, who’s on MoMA’s development exhibition and project funding team. “The core values and mission of both Uniqlo and MoMA are about making art free to the public.”
Sarah Suzuki, MoMA’s associate curator, who’s been working on the SPRZ NY project since the start, suggests artists whose work would translate well in SPRZ: “The kind of work people might be interested in, and what the SPRZ platform offers artists in their work.”
While Jackson Pollock has been the top-selling SPRZ artist thus far, for SS2015 MoMA and Uniqlo are introducing less familiar but nonetheless interesting names.
“We’re focusing on the Russian avant-garde, artists of the first two decades of the 20th century who created a design revolution,” Suzuki says. “They came up with the idea that art shouldn’t be something you go see in a museum, art should be integrated in every aspect of your life. Aleksandr Rodchenko invented the idea of photomontage, and was deeply engaged with book and magazine design.
“Jennifer Barlett is a living artist who became extremely well known in the 1980s making figurative work. What’s interesting is that she went back to her own personal archive and has pulled a lot of things that she’s made over the years that never found a final form: really beautiful allover abstract patterns, loose grids or florals that are translating so beautifully in the samples that we’ve seen; it’s exciting this is giving that work resolution.
“Anni Albers worked with Bauhaus, how to spread art education in the world, and a lot of what she did was weavings and textile design so again she’s a really great partner.”
From menswear to lifewear
To think that Uniqlo started as a men’s brand 30 years ago. The Japanese retail giant has definitely come a long way.
“Mr. Yanai wants everyone in the world to have at least one piece from Uniqlo,” Andersson says. “We don’t segment the world — that’s our ‘made for all’ concept.”
Muses Nealz, “They’re clothes to help you through your life.”
