Sugoi! Your next Uniqlo shirt will be made out of plastic bottles

Uniqlo unveiled revolutionary new technologies in London like converting PET bottles into clothing, Hybrid Down and 3D knitwear.

I have seen the future of fashion, and it is Uniqlo.

The Japanese global apparel retailer recently held its annual LifeWear Day in London, and unveiled exciting new technologies to rival its signature Ultra Light Down jackets, which have taken the world by storm ever since they were introduced a decade ago.

“In 2001 I tapped London,” said Uniqlo founder and chairman, president and CEO of Fast Retailing, Tadashi Yanai, who opened Uniqlo’s first store outside Japan in the British fashion capital 18 years ago.

PET project: Uniqlo partner Toray Industries of Japan recycles PET bottles into polyester fibers, which are then made into Uniqlo’s Dry-Ex, a fabric that quickly wicks sweat and moisture away from the body.

Uniqlo held the LifeWear exhibition in Somerset House, a former royal residence that’s become a cultural hub for art and theater.

There was plenty of both in the highly Instagrammable exhibition: the fall/winter 2019 LifeWear collection was presented as an art installation that hung from the ceiling, its vivid fuchsias, yellows and purples recalling an exotic silk or spice market.

Other immersive experiences included “50 Colours of Socks,” a mirrored room lit by chandeliers made from Uniqlo socks; a sensory walk through a tunnel constructed of blue and white AIRism fabric; and the HeatTech Room, where a giant screen on the ceiling displayed how the technology works on a micro level.

Feel the HeatTech: In the HeatTech Room, a giant screen on the ceiling displays how the technology works on a micro level.

But the most exciting announcement had to be how Uniqlo and its longtime partner, Toray Industries, have developed the technology to convert PET bottles into clothes.

Toray, a fiber and textile company that supplies materials for aircraft and developed the technology to turn seawater into fresh water, recycles the plastic bottles into polyester fibers, which are then made into Uniqlo’s Dry-Ex, an innovative fabric that quickly wicks sweat and moisture away from the body.

“This is a milestone because, while fibers made from reclaimed plastic bottles have been commercially available for some time, it has been hard to produce fibers featuring special cross-sections and fine fibers, owing to contaminants in PET bottles,” says Akihiro Nikkaku, president of Toray Industries, Inc. “Another challenge has been that plastic bottles yellow as they age. Toray’s contaminant-filtering technology overcomes these issues.”

Wardrobe essentials: The Mid-century Modern movement inspired the clean lines, organic shapes and vibrant colors of Uniqlo’s fall/winter 2019 LifeWear collection.

Four PET bottles can be recycled into one Dry-Ex T-shirt (I felt the fabric and it is super-soft, light and comfortable), and Uniqlo will begin to introduce these new Dry-Ex pieces beginning spring/summer 2020.

Another big sustainability move involves Uniqlo and Toray developing clothing made from recycled down. Uniqlo stores will collect used Ultra Light Down (ULD) items from customers, and a new Toray-developed system will extract material from these ULD pieces to be cleansed for use in new down merchandise. Collection will start late September this year in Japan, and some down products from the 2020 fall/winter season will employ this recycled material.

Hybrid down & 3D knitwear

Other exciting innovations for FW19 include Hybrid Down, un-quilted coats and jackets even lighter than ULD based on a special jacket Uniqlo made for Olympic snowboarder Ayumu Hirano. While down is warm and light, it doesn’t stand up well to moisture or abrasion from the wearer’s movements. In Hybrid Down, the areas most sensitive to warmth — the back of the neck, lower back and stomach — are lined with premium down, while thin but warm synthetic insulation is used for the areas with the most range of movement, like the sleeves, waist and hood.

Highly Instagrammable: Uniqlo created “50 Colours of Socks,” a mirrored room lit by chandeliers made from Uniqlo socks in Somerset House in London.

Uniqlo has also ventured into the 3D realm with 3D knits, clothes made as one seamless piece using special Wholegarment equipment designed in Japan. One knit sweater or dress can be produced from just three threads of yarn, and the seamlessness ensures a more comfortable stretch and better fit.

A day in lifewear

LifeWear Day points to how Uniqlo sets itself apart from other fashion retail giants, both in philosophy and quality. Atypically, there is no fashion show to present the new collection — instead, Uniqlo always presents installations to educate the public on its technologies both new and old — and though they do follow the seasonal fashion cycle, their collections are more on-trend than trendy.

“We are not fast fashion; we would never offer disposable clothing,” emphasizes Yanai. “Fast-fashion products are not necessarily durable. Maybe you can wear it for one year, but not next year, because they are not well made. But we wanted to offer clothing that could be wearable and durable for a long period of time.”

Check, mate: JW Anderson’s FW19 collection for Uniqlo will be available in the Philippines in October.

The overarching message is that LifeWear is simple, essential apparel designed based on customer need and made from high-quality materials and components.

“It’s durable, reasonably priced, with no standout logos so the customer can mix and match,” continues Yanai. “LifeWear is clothing designed to make everyone’s life better. Our philosophy is ‘Made for All.’”

Fashion meets art and science: At the press conference with Toray Industries president Akihiro Nikkaku, Uniqlo’s FW19 collection was presented as an art installation that hung from the ceiling.

I would add that basics have never looked or felt so much like high fashion. According to Rebekka Bay, creative director of Uniqlo’s Global Innovation Center, the FW19 collection was inspired by Mid-century Modern, a design movement that explains the collection’s clean lines, organic shapes and vibrant colors.

Rebekka Bay, creative director of Uniqlo Co. Ltd.: “Our theme of ‘New Form Follows Function’ is very fitting because so much of what we do is based on where we are in terms of new innovation, new manufacturing methods, and addressing sustainability through LifeWear.”

“We always look at a lot of architects, furniture makers, and industrial designers,” Bay says. “The mid-century movement happened in all these different markets at the same time due to new manufacturing methods, so our theme of ‘New Form Follows Function’ is very fitting because so much of what we do is based on where we are in terms of new innovation, new manufacturing methods, addressing sustainability through LifeWear and how we produce our items.”

‘Teresita-san is such a powerful leader’

When Yanai started Uniqlo (short for “unique clothing”) in Yamaguchi, Japan, 30 years ago, his concept was to build a store offering high-quality clothing that was affordable and everyone would have access to.

Thirty years later Uniqlo has 3,588 stores across the world, a turnover of 2.13 trillion yen and has delivered 1.3 billion pieces of clothing to customers around the world. Yanai is currently the richest man in Japan, with a fortune of $24.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Tee time: UT, or Uniqlo T-Shirts, feature the works of Pop artists Andy Warhol (left) and Keith Haring.

Uniqlo recently opened flagship stores in Milan (where 1,200 people lined up waiting for the doors to open), India and Vietnam, which Yanai views as a region of extremely high potential (“Southeast Asia is the growth engine of the world.”).

Yanai told me the innovation he’s proudest of is opening the very first Uniqlo store in Hiroshima, Japan: “When I opened the store, my sentiment was that, oh, I have discovered a goldmine. So many customers were rushing to our store when we opened, both on Saturday and Sunday of that weekend. We needed to limit how many people could come into the store because it was packed.”

The tech that started it all: Uniqlo’s Ultra Light Down jackets are the company’s signature products — so light that even balloons can carry them.

In the past Yanai said that he would retire when he turned 70, a milestone he reached last February, so the question of who will succeed him is very much on his mind. “I’m desperately in need of my successor — someone who is modest, deep thinking and quick to act,” he says.

Though the Uniqlo founder has two sons, Kazumi and Koji, whom he promoted to company directors last year, Yanai is considering the possibility of a woman succeeding him, but notes that Japanese women need to be more aggressive, aspirational and ambitious. “So many women say, ‘Oh, just middle management is fine. I don’t have to be one of the top leaders, you know, they are so modest. Their way of thinking is that they do not want to go for the top position. I want to encourage more women to be ambitious.”

Jean genie: Uniqlo’s new reduced-water method of washing jeans using nano-bubble and waterless ozone technology cuts water usage down by 90 percent on average.

On the other hand, Yanai is all praise for the Filipino women he’s met, like Tessie Sy-Coson of SM Investments Corporation. “Teresita-san is such a powerful leader,” he says admiringly. “Well, this is not limited to the Philippines, but this is a country market in which very active women can be found. In other words, I need to encourage more male employees to do a better job,” he laughs.

While his goal before was to become the number-one fashion retailer in the world, he claims that “nowadays I tend to think that’s less meaningful, because obviously if you are running a business, numbers and size are important, but you have to make sure that qualitatively we have to do a good job. I want to make this company the most respected company in the world, so we need to produce very good garments and we need to lure very attractive talent to create very, very good products. It’s not necessarily a quantitative goal but more a qualitative goal — to become the best-ever company.”

Light as air: The AIRism installation features the light innerwear fabric designed to keep you dry and comfortable all day long as strips dyed in a gradient from blue to white.

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Uniqlo’s fall/winter 2019 collection is available at the company’s 59 stores in the Philippines.

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