Issue #4

Words by Cory Ohlendorf | Photography courtesy of UNIQLO

You don’t have to visit Japan to shop in a UNIQLO, but if you do come to Tokyo or any other Japanese city, you will undoubtedly run into many of the brand’s shops—they come in a myriad of shapes and sizes. But, by far, the most impressive is the towering flagship in the tony neighborhood of Ginza. The 12-floor emporium is stocked with everything the brand offers, from wardrobe staples to a wide range of accessories, along with artistic installations, limited-edition collaborations and even a station to customize and personalize items you buy.

UNIQLO is a brand that’s become synonymous with Japan’s reputation for sweating the details, high quality products and elegant, minimalist branding. Many of us in America first came to learn about the label in the early 2000s, when they introduced cashmere sweaters for less than $100. Still available in a kaleidoscope of colors, they really shouldn’t be as good as they are. Each sweater is soft yet durable, knit from wool that’s been carefully selected from the world's leading producers, then treated so the finished garments are resistant to pilling. Over the past two decades, the brand has been refining the sweaters—from evolving the knitting process to experimenting with yarn thickness and tension for the most luxurious feel and overall durability. The end result sums up the brand’s ethos for quality, wearability, comfort and value.

I’m not sure how much you know about UNIQLO, but it’s still essentially a family business. One man, Tadashi Yanai, owns 46% of the parent company. And an additional 40% is co-owned by his wife and two sons. Yanai got his start 40 years ago this summer with a small men’s clothing brand in Hiroshima that he begrudgingly inherited from his father. He opened a shop in June of 1984 named Unique Clothing Warehouse, focusing on affordably-priced clothes that customers could combine with their existing wardrobe to create their own unique style. The brand says that, it’s “more than just a clothing brand, but a way of thinking … a steady consciousness of constant change, diversity, and the challenging of conventions.”

And while Yanai always had the intention to build an empire of menswear stores, he couldn’t have predicted that the mistakes of growing fast would forever change his company. A year after the original store opened, the brand started opening other outlets and Unique Clothing Warehouse adopted the abbreviation Uni-Clo. As the company started looking to expand internationally, they registered the company in Hong Kong. The “C” in Uni-Clo was misread as “Q” and the UNIQLO moniker was born. Intrigued by the new name, Yanai embraced it and changed the store’s name across Japan.

Within a decade, there were already 100 UNIQLO stores operating across Japan, and in 1996 the company opened an office in Tokyo’s Shibuya district to improve in-house product planning and development. This was also a time when Japan was experiencing a recession, so UNIQLO’s low prices and reliable clothing was exactly what consumers needed. Still, to this day, it’s a spot where people of all ages can come and supplement their wardrobe for work and play. In Tokyo, the boxy UNIQLO U T-shirt is a common staple found on men of varying personal styles. The brand’s HeatTech and AIRism performance gear is well-loved and a simple nylon crossbody bag went viral worldwide and continues to sell out this summer.

UNIQLO has often been called “the Japanese Gap” and there’s a reason for that. As the brand was growing in the mid-1990s, Yanai wasn’t sure how to take it to the next level, so he sought out American merchandising legend Mickey Drexler, who was responsible for Gap’s huge growth and cultural relevance. He invited Drexler to lunch to talk shop and set out to study Drexler’s every move in order to perfectly replicate the Gap’s playbook. This is when UNIQLO reordered its business model to only produce and exclusively sell all of its own clothing. Yanai even had buzz-worthy commercials made for UNIQLO to get people talking. “I might look successful, but I’ve made many mistakes,” Yanai once told Monocle. “People take their failures too seriously. You have to be positive and believe you will find success next time.”

One of the brand’s biggest successes to date has been their approach to collaborations. These limited-edition and capsule collections now form the backbone of UNIQLO’s philosophy of staying current and tapping into designers or artists who can reinterpret the brand’s aesthetic and offer a new vision. Now with drops selling out online in minutes and queues around the block for limited releases, UNIQLO has tapped into the psyche of new (and existing) customers by offering collections with such designers as Christophe Lemaire, JW Anderson, Jil Sander and Undercover; denim from the renowned Kaihara mill and items featuring the art of KAWS and Takashi Murakami.

Forty years in, UNIQLO has certainly proven that it’s much more than fast fashion. It remains distinct by offering its own take on Japanese design with a blend of simplicity, functionality and practicality. Over these past four decades, they’ve carved out a clear brand identity and earned the respect of consumers and fashion lovers alike. And still, UNIQLO continues to innovate in order to stay relevant without abandoning the core products that got them here.

You might think the name is lost in translation. That “Shoes Like Pottery” is making low-top sneakers that can't possibly be comfortable or durable. But it’s just the opposite. Since 1873, the company has been handcrafting handsome and minimalist sneakers from textured canvas in their Kurume, Fukuoka studio. Each and every pair is forged in a kiln using the traditional "ka-ryu" technique—a vulcanizing process where extreme temperatures meld the sole to each shoe. By vulcanizing the rubber this way, the eye-catching blue outsole becomes soft, flexible and unyieldingly durable, resulting in a much longer-lasting sneaker. And now the name makes a lot more sense.

Ikigai (生きがい) is a broad Japanese term that blends two words: iki meaning “to live”, and gai meaning “reason”, and roughly translates to one’s “reason for living”. It’s a concept that encourages people to discover what truly matters to them and to live a life filled with purpose and joy. “There’s no word like it anywhere in the world,” says Héctor Garcia, co-author of the book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, which helped push ikigai into the global spotlight. It can truly be anything that brings purpose and joy to your life, from people, such as one’s children or friends, to activities including work and hobbies.