UNIQLO T-shirts 2005 project

UNIQLO (read this Yunikuro) is a casual wear brand. Their colorful, lightweight, warm and inexpensive fleece made big sales, and they became a well-known brand in Japan. Thinking of the expensive price of sports brand's fleece, their quality and price were a big surprise in those days. Actually UNIQLO was called one of the "price revolution" companies in Japan, the same as McDonald's, the weekday discount and 100yen shops. I had a beige fleece as my nightwear in those days. But like we say "Too much spoils, too little does not satisfy." Just a few years later, the sales went down and down, and people had an image of UNIQLO as a cheap Japanese uniform. This article "Do you like UNIQLO clothes?" was featured in 2001, ha ha.

But recently they've tried to recover from this setback with new ideas. They've kept the price low, but they've added something more to their product lines. For example I like this T-shirt project "T2005". UNIQLO now makes T-shirts with various motifs. In their Art category, you can buy Barbara Kruger, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein designed T-Shirts for 1000 Yen. In the Creative Award category, they offered an award and picked the most creatively designed T-shirts, hmm interesting isn't it?  With company collaborations, wow! So many T-shirts were sold out; they had a small stock for this skin lotion company''s T. The original skin lotion bottle is this one.  Art students around the world designed these T-shirts.  I like this. This is a sports T-shirt. I like this Dodgers shirt. In their original designs you may find some Japanese tastes, Not so bad, right?. 

Anyway they don't features Japanese artists, Japanese sports teams, or Japanese c olleges, but they picked American Artists, MBL & MFL, and the U.S colleges. Why? Could it be related to copyright issues or something?

Which one do I like most? I like the kids category's. I would pick either the Tomika (mini car) or  the Pararail (mini train).  Kawaii! However they are too small for me ah-ah. Anyway UNIQLO has a shop in the UK and China. They may open another shop in Europe soon.

Comments

A...

[nichol]

Hi first post on your blog (sorry it's on such an old update :) I accidentally found you while googling for the story of Onoda Hiroo. AAAnyway, I love the new Uniqlo lines, and have that great baseball cap with Basquiat's 'crown' on it. I like how these clothes can be both functional/stylish and ironic :D

[Mari]

Hi Charles
yes I want to know that!! Sounds interesting!
Hi Huang. Yes they are, they accept old fleece when we bring it to them.

[huang]

Is fleece actually recycled material ?

[Charles]

Someday I'll have to tell you the story about how Barbara Kruger accidentally offended the entire Japanese community in Los Angeles. But it's a long story.