Uniqlo is the Japanese equivalent of what Gap used to be in the beginning. They do have a little more edge to it and style than Gap.
Their flagship store in NY is really awesome and UNIQLO also introduces good design programs for new artists.
So far they did 3 big ones.
Designers Invitation Project
The Uniqlo Designers Invitation Project saw the invitation of womenswear designers Phillip Lim, Alice Roi, Tina Lutz and Marcia Patmos of Lutz & Patmos, Kino, and GVGV; and men’s wear designers Halb, Satoru Tanaka, and Alexandre Plokhov of Cloak to each design capsule collections of eight looks for Spring/Summer 2007.
4 additional designers/labels were asked for the 2009 Designers Invitation Project. Women’s wear saw boutique owner Steven Alan and Shipley & Halmos, while men’s wear include Opening Ceremony and Gilded Age.
UT Project
The UT Project was launched on April 28th 2007 in Harajuku, Tokyo with the launch of a new innovative store concept designed by UNIQLO creative director Kashiwa Sato of a futuristic convenience store for t-shirts. Each t-shirt style is displayed on forms in stainless steel display cases, with individual t-shirts packaged in clear plastic canisters resembling tennis ball cans. The t-shirts are stored on open shelves, making the shopping experience virtually self-service.
In celebration of the opening of the UT store, UNIQLO launched the UT Project, a limited-edition collection of t-shirts designed by renowned artists, designers, photographers and musicians including Terry Richardson, Nobuyoshi Araki, Bjorn Copeland of Black Dice, Kim Jones, Peter Saville, Gareth Pugh and many more. There are approximately 1,000 unique t-shirt styles being delivered each year as part of the UT Project from these artists as well as other collaborative efforts such as ECM Records and the Evolution Store in SoHo, NY. The t-shirts will be available at the UT store and UNIQLO stores worldwide, with nearly 100 new styles being introduced to the New York Global Flagship Store each month.
Uniqlock Project
Uniqlock, a web-based Flash widget as well as downloadable screensaver combination of Music-Dance-Clock, was launched in June 15th 2007. Season 1 features four girls auditioned from youtube wearing Uniqlo’s 20 color dry polo shirt, dancing freestyles similar to ballet , with background music composed by Fantastic Plastic Machine. Blog-parts were Flash components provided so that Uniqlock can be inserted into individual blog pages. Uniqlock soon gained popularity, as shown in its World Uniqlock page. Until November 2008 there were up to 191 million clicks from over 200 countries, with up to 40,000 blog-parts in 88 countries. Uniqlock Season 2, launched in November 2007, featured Cashemere Knits, with the same dancers, dance style, as well background. The movie quality was improved, and dancers would appear to be asleep if the time in the specified region is nighttime. Also in each hour special clips would be shown instead; Season 2 features 2 men playing music, doing clean up chores. In season 3 20 color t-shirt promotion, 4 new dancers were introduced in addition to the original 4, switched by hour.
Now they have created this amazing calendar. It overlays Japan in a stop-motion tilt-photography video with some great music from Fantastic Plastic Machine
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