Gee Thanks, It’s From Uniqlo

0:03Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's fashion and beauty memo line Sheet. And today with me on the show is the New Yorkers, Lauren Collins. She's here to discuss her recent deep dive on one of the most intriguing retailers of our time, Uniqlo.

0:24Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. it's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries line she is scoopy analytical and above all fun along with me a subscription to puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment media sports politics finance the art world and much more if you're interested listeners of fashion people get a discount.

1:00Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join puck or start a free trial.

1:09Happy Friday, everyone. It has been a week. When is it not? I have got lots of details on the Dario Vitale exit inline sheet. He left Versace. He was the designer there. Sarah Shapiro looked at how fashion influencers are exploiting Substack. Rachel Sturgatz covered the comeback of John Dempsey, everyone's favorite once canceled beauty exec. And on Thursday, no longer canceled. On Thursday, I covered what's really happening at Saks Fifth Avenue. Right now, people are thinking something big is going to happen there in the next few weeks, some sort of announcement or months, maybe a restructuring the business.

1:45We don't know yet. Maybe Richard Baker will plan something else or figure something else out. He's very smart. So we'll check out my reporting for that and we will see. I hope you are enjoying your holiday party. Send me reports from New York, London, Milan and Paris. Reminder, I'm in L.A. these these next few weeks. And perhaps I'll mention them next week. The best party of the week for me was obviously Max Stein's. But there were a few runners up and interesting things happened so we can chat about it next week. And let's get going with Lauren. Lauren Collins, welcome to Fashion People. Hi, Lauren.

2:17I'm so happy to be here with you. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Nothing. I had a cup of tea, but only because it's kind of a long story. Well, anyway, Not my usual breakfast routine, but there were extenuating circumstances. What do you typically have for breakfast? A cup of tea. No, I'm not. I'll tell you about a good breakfast I had. Yes. I was in London last week on a story and I woke up really early and I was at the door of Honey and Company at 8 a.m. when it opened. So good. Shakshuka. I didn't have a cup of tea. I had a hot chocolate. I don't know what I was doing. Sweet, salty mix.

3:00That sounds amazing. I wouldn't like that. You know, I was escaping from Paris so I could do the sucrose to LA anytime I wanted to. And I think I even had, I think I had something else. But anyway, that was my best breakfast recently, if you're interested in that. That's delicious. I also don't eat breakfast much anymore. I did have breakfast this morning. It was very good. But you know what I made my son this morning? Because my husband's out of town and was like, he didn't know what he wanted. He didn't want avocado toast. He didn't, I burned his egg yesterday. Like I made him a piece of cinnamon sugar toast.

3:34Ooh, an oldie, but a goodie. It was so, he was like, I want more. I was like, no. It's like, this cannot be a thing you eat every day for breakfast, but it is a special breakfast. And he was just like, this is the best thing ever. It was so good. Did you let him do the sprinkling or did you do it yourself? I did it because he is like me and like his father to an extent, doesn't understand moderation. And over simpler in the making. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He just wants more and more and more and more and more. It's definitely a trait he gets from me, actually. Dan can have like a half a piece of chocolate.

4:09He's like, I'm good. But I want more and more and more. And he was just like, oh, my God, I didn't know that this is a possible thing to eat. He was very excited. He was like, you're going to put sugar on food and then we're just going to eat it like that. It was a cute moment. And important a Tiffany in every boy's life. Yes. When you were in London, did you go to a Uniqlo? They're very big there. No, I didn't, only because I have a friendly neighborhood Uniqlo that keeps me well supplied here in Paris. But we can get into this. I was reading that Uniqlo's revenues in Japan have been thoroughly helped by the wave of mass tourism to Japan and, you know, of Americans and Europeans taking advantage of the exchange rate.

4:57But anyway, yeah, Uniqlo shopping while on holiday is a whole like little sliver of Uniqlo. It's true. I've bought Uniqlo U items in Japan that are way too short in the arms. I don't know about that problem, but I'm so sorry for you. Yes. Japan is a hard place. I am tall. I'm not that tall. I'm like 5 '8". My friend Molly, who is, I think, 5 '11", probably, she thought I was like average size. I should state for our listeners that I am not tall. How tall are you, 5 '3", or 5 '4"? I'm 5 '2". You're 5 '2". Okay. Uniqlo, I mean, if you want to get into it, Uniqlo sizing, there are some strange things going on with the sizing at Uniqlo.

5:46When they made their kind of first foray into the U.S. in the early 2000s, people were really flummoxed by the sizing. But even now, like they've had a lot of time to kind of contend with that. And you'll still find this is my personal beef about Uniqlo sizing. There is an item called it's like the famous sock of 50 colors. and this is the item that everybody loves and it shows up on every best of list and it's like the sub stackers darling and it made the list index you know it was this first luxury good that appeared on this on the list index um maybe earlier this year but anyway what's really annoying about it is it only starts at european size 39 it's it's like it's perfect for me that's my shoe size yeah well i'm a 37 and i went in on these 50 colors of socks but instead i'm left with you know kind of like nordic patterns or like they're really ugly colors that they make only for the women's range so that's a uniclo sizing thing the other thing is that if i am correctly informed everything above extra large so extra extra and extra extra extra is available only online in the u.s it exists but it's like really hard to come by so yeah uniclo sizing uh i really They got to size down those socks.

7:07And you think also because they're famous for having like you have to size up and everything in Uniqlo. They're famous for everything being really small because it's, you know, the base for their sizes are Japanese sizes, which don't correspond to American and European ones necessarily. But anyway, I can't believe at a, you know, not so anomalous 37. I can't get it on these socks. The irony. I did read that extra, extra and extra, extra L online last night when I was rereading your piece. So it was fact checked by the New Yorker. So I believe that that is correct. Lauren, why do you know so much about Uniqlo?

7:44Tell us who you are. I am the world's self-appointed Uniqlo expert, at least for the time being. But the reason I know so much about Uniqlo is because I wrote a big kind of institutional profile of the company for The New Yorker recently. So you are the New Yorker's Paris correspondent, which is the coolest job at the New Yorker, I would say. But you write about a lot of different things. You end up writing about the fashion industry a lot because Paris is a company town. And so you're interacting with fashion industry people and executives all the time. And you also, were you Michael Roberts' assistant?

8:25I think I may have been for a short time, but I more officially was Jay Fieldin and Hamish Bulls' assistant for a short but happy year way back in the day. I think it was like the actual year that The Devil Wears Prada was published, which, if I am correct, would have been 2002, 2003. So I started my career, that was my, you know, first job in journalism was as an editorial assistant on the, you know, and let me stress the editorial, well, and the assistant. But the point is that I was on the words and not the, you know, fashion picture side of Vogue. So, yeah, that's kind of my like that's my fashion resume, my thin fashion resume.

9:16But it's true that, you know, I've been living in Paris for 10 years now covering France for The New Yorker. And as one of the world's fashion capitals, at least, you know, there's there's just an embarrassment of riches to write about in terms of fashion in Paris. And I love writing about fashion. I mean, even though it's not my, you know, exclusive beat, I see it as one of the kind of last preserves of, for better or for worse, interesting characters. I mean, sometimes they're interesting because they're reprehensible. Sometimes they're interesting because they're just incredibly creative. Sometimes they're interesting because the business story is, you know, tantalizing.

9:59So anyway, yeah, I love writing about fashion. And though I don't do it all the time, I'm kind of always excited to when I get the chance. We love when you do it. So why did you choose Uniqlo as a topic? Because it's not a French brand. It's very prevalent in France these days. But what attracted you to the story of Uniqlo first spelled with a C? Yeah, well, so yeah, we should just state now for anyone who's listening, because this is a fun fact that you can trot out at Christmas. Maybe people will care. Maybe they won't. But Uniqlo is actually short for unique clothing. And I have a whole theory about where this name came from that I can tell you later.

10:41But anyhow, I didn't actually want to write this story now. I wanted to write it four or five years ago. And the reason I started thinking about Uniqlo, I had written a story about IKEA a long time ago, and I started to see Uniqlo kind of doing many of the same things and dominating this, like, affordable fashion space in similar ways to what IKEA has done for the home. So I thought, well, this would be interesting. It would be interesting to just figure out like what Uniqlo is, where it comes from, what their goals are. And anyway, so, yeah, four or five years ago, I kind of jumped through a bunch of hoops, like pitched it to their people, thought we were getting really close.

11:26And just when I thought they were about to say yes, they ghosted me. Or I mean, I won't say ghosted, but they pulled out, decided not to do the story. And I remember writing that kind of like, would you care to tell me why? And never heard much more. Shout out to Aldo. I don't think it was Aldo. We love that. Aldo is the best. I love him. I will not name any names. But anyway, I was hoping to do it ages ago and it just didn't really materialize. But when I read that they'd hired Claire Wake Keller, I thought that it might be a good opportunity to revive the idea. And I was right. Like this time around, I emailed them and was like, hey, we almost did this piece a while ago.

12:10Would you be interested in doing it now? And so that, yeah, that's how like Uniqlo New Yorker Profile 2025 came about.

12:22so can you kind of walk us through through your lens what Uniqlo is to you and its like current place in the culture because I agree that the Claire hire is really interesting and you got you got to a a place of truth with it that I think maybe a lot of fashion traditional fashion writers wouldn't have. But like what what is Uniqlo to you and like how have you seen it develop globally through France, but then also as an American watching it in the U.S. as well? Well, OK, just so just proselytically, Uniqlo was founded in 1984 by Tadashi Yanai, who is still at the top of the company. I mean, he's he's made several kind of, you know, performative efforts at retiring and turning the reins over to someone else.

13:15But he still runs the show. And he is the second richest man in Japan at this point. The company has over 2 ,500 stores in Asia, Europe, and North America. One in four Japanese people is said to own a Uniqlo puffer. So this is ubiquitous in Japan and becoming increasingly so elsewhere. And this is something that I think is important to kind of home in on now. Last year, Fast Retailing, which is the holding company that controls Uniqlo, had its best year ever, generating close to$20 billion in revenue and$3 billion in profit. And this makes it the world's third largest apparel manufacturer and retailer.

13:58So the point is, Zara is hot on the heels of H &M and Inditex, the parent company of Zara. And although Uniqlo is third, it's growing faster than both of them. So the company's stated goal is to be the number one fashion company in the world. And they're really making strides in that direction. But as far as what it means to me, like I see Uniqlo, and I wrote this in the piece, as kind of the universal donor of fashion. Uniqlo like can mix kind of unobtrusively with any lifestyle, any aesthetic, Um, yeah, it's like, I think if you were to try to think of a brand that almost anyone would have in their closets, at least in places where it's accessible, like Uniqlo would be a really good candidate for that.

14:52So I was interested in that. I'm really interested in the way that having this kind of like perspective, this mass perspective on how people live, I'm interested in the sociological dimensions of it. I had this fantasy and I was never able to like really prove it through my reporting, although I have other examples. But I was like, what happens if you make a billion pairs of cargo pants a year? I mean, first of all, ecological implications are major. But let's talk about kind of sociology for a minute. I was like, if Uniqlo moves a pair of a pocket on a pair of pants, does that mean that like, you know, X number of people like don't get pickpocketed or that they do?

15:36Or I'm just I think it's fascinating to think how these adjustments in mass clothing can kind of, I don't know, just make a difference in the way people move through the world. I was really interested to learn when I was reporting that, well, they're like obsessed with customer feedback. and there was this interesting anecdote where they have their call center in japan is like in-house and the operators are instructed to talk with people as long as they want to you know it's not about churn it's not about getting them off the phone they're like they'll just chat with people all day long and so they learned like from one japanese housewife for example that a lot of women like to wear the puffer jackets inside, the light ones to save on eating, and that they were wearing them while washing dishes and they wanted tighter elastics so that the sleeves wouldn't slip down, you know, and get all sudsy while they're scrubbing the dishes.

16:32But like, I just find that kind of stuff really interesting. It's fascinating because so much of what has made Uniqlo work globally has been in the and they use this term lifewear which you write quite a bit about and i find um incredible impenetrable yes incredibly difficult to access as an american is what i was going to say but impenetrable is the cleaner way to to say it um but it and and the thing that you know as i've i've reported on uniclo on and off for many years but mostly through the lens of Mr. Yanai wanting to be Gap or to be his obsession with Gap or his buying of Helmut Lang and theory and that type of thing and understanding him.

17:25And also, I think writing about Uniqlo has made me understand Japanese people better and how they operate. And the thing that was so frustrating to me, and you write a lot about this in the piece about the marketing in the U.S. and how they've been challenged in the U.S. in some ways and not in others. I think the thing that has made them succeed is the technicality of the product. Like when they first launched in the U.S., the fashion industry people got on board really quickly with the turtlenecks and all of that because A, you know, they wanted something to replace Gap in there. We like we need the cheap, cool thing or whatever.

18:07And B, heat tech is amazing. Like I wear a black turtleneck. Sometimes I wear it running in L.A. I wear it. I was in New York last week. It was freezing. I wore one over almost under almost every single outfit I had on. So I didn't have to wear a giant coat. It's a really just useful product. And so much of what they do, even when the cut isn't exactly right, even though the marketing that exists is weird and doesn't really, you have no way to connect with it, the product is just so much better than anything else out there. Or, you know, you could argue that it is. That that has, the product is the marketing.

18:48And that is, you're talking about these women wearing the coats inside. That's what has made it successful. It's really, I wonder what drove him in that way. Like, was it that they have access to good textiles? Was it that, or do you think it's more of the Japanese way of doing things combined with this, like, lust to be a global company? There's actually a really solid answer to that question, which is they have this partnership. And I mean, they're always vaunting this. It's a big part of their company story. But they have a partnership with a materials manufacturer called Toray. And so basically, it's a two-way street.

19:36When they want to make something, if they're like, I don't know who came up with heat tip, but let's say they really wanted to make a thin kind of underlayer that would keep people warm. They can go to Torre and be like, what kind of fabric do you have or what kind of fabric might you be able to create that would achieve these kind of like technical specifications? But on the other hand, Torre also comes to them and is like, hey, we're creating this new thing. How do you think you might be able to incorporate it into fashion? So it's interesting that, yeah, I mean, they have a huge advantage in that way in that they're not outsourcing like the technological side of the business.

20:17I also think the heat tech, I mean, the tech products are really popular. But like this year, the thing I loved the most was the Merino Polo. Have you gotten into the Merino Polo, Lauren? No, I'm looking it up right now. Well, I've got it in navy blue and I've got it in hunter green. wish I had it in black but yeah hunter green it's nice right oh this is great no with like a army green kind of pant and you have a little monochrome um a whole thing but anyway I think yeah the merino polo is kind of my deep cut in the my under the underappreciated cut um on the Uniqlo collection this year but yeah so they do have this like real selling point even if, you know, as you said, I don't know that it's not that the marketing is weird necessarily, but it's like text heavy.

21:09It's a little bit hokey, like pedagogical. They're very into transmitting. Yeah, it's kind of like it's like a fact sheet and it can be really interesting. I mean, it's also funny because I realized in reporting this piece, you know, a Uniqlo press conference is the only place you're going to go and hear about. I can't even come up with the terminology. It was like amino, you know, I don't know what, but it's very science, which is unusual. It's a plus for some people. It's like a little off-putting for others. But I think what's truly weird more than the marketing is probably the e-commerce experience, which even though Uniqlo is, you know, now the third biggest clothing company, it only accounts for 15 % of their sales.

22:01So, you know. It's the worst. It's, it's, it's tough. I mean, I had somebody, when I was reporting this piece, I was talking to somebody about it and they were like, I felt like I was signing up for a dating app. I mean, you have to give so much information. It's passwords. It's, you know, all kinds of stuff that people don't necessarily want to do just to buy some socks and underwear. But like, and actually your colleague, Sarah Shapiro taught me the term rage clicks. So funny. Which was amazing. And if I understand correctly, refers to just like, you know, the number of times that people are kind of just frustratedly clicking when a button doesn't work or when things aren't going as fast as they want to.

22:50Apparently, Uniqlo, according to Sarah, has a very high ratio of rage clicks. that's very funny I've I that's hilarious it is it is one of those websites where you go on you're like where is the product and also I the thing that is frustrating to me and this happened years ago when Uniqlo U with Christophe Lemaire first launched it was like and I lived in New York that was I would buy like two pieces of Lemaire collection a year and then just wear Uniqlo U so I would get like 15 things and a lot of times I would order it online if I was out of town or whatever they're online and offline and they may have changed this now but it was not two separate stores so if you went in so I went into the Soho store once and I was like I have this stuff coming online like it's it's being delivered here I like sent it to the store for free delivery but you have it here can I and it's going to be five more days can I just get my stuff now and and it was stuff like that or like returning something online or offline or what have you.

24:00I mean, it's a lot of the things that all retailers were dealing with 20 or 15 years ago that they just haven't updated. And maybe there's something about it that's like the lack of functionality makes people like there. It's like that theory that Apple has of like you need to make a little tension for people to like make it a little hard to get stuff. I don't know if that's what they're doing here. I don't know if that is necessarily the conscious, you know, um, the, the kind of, uh, conscious theory of their website. But what is interesting, you know, we were talking about life where, which is this kind of, um, this obscure slogan that is very, very important in the Uniqlo universe.

24:50I mean, they are very sincere about it and take it very seriously. The more questions I asked about it, the less I actually understood it. But it's supposed to be. The idea is that they think that they can do good in the world by making functional and appealing clothing available to almost everyone. That's the goal. I was like, why does a clothing company need to do good in the world? Why can't you just sell sweaters? Just to be devil's advocate. But the answer was something like, because life wear. I didn't really manage to understand how exactly this works. But in any case, I had this fascinating conversation with a professor of, he's a translator of Japanese literature.

25:36And he was hired by Uniqlo to work on the life wear slogan. And he told me that, and this was with Mr. Yanai's both assent and and I think maybe explicit instruction. But anyway, like they tried to make it, yeah, like a little tricky. I think they wanted to he told me that they wanted people to stop and think about what it meant, which I just thought, I mean, you know, I don't know, like I don't know if Zara or H &M, if you're going to get an esteemed translator of medieval Japanese literature working on the slogan. There's something that is like incredibly earnest and painstaking about this company in ways that I think sets it apart in ways that are interesting.

26:21Yeah, and I think the fact that it's not, it is function-based and less trend-based in the same way Gap came out in the 80s, that it, because H &M and Zara, but Zara has gone more upmarket in the last few years, and that's an interesting story in and of itself. But the reality of the matter is it's very focused on trend. Like I haven't been in an H &M and I think also, you know, it's age as well. But I haven't been in H &M in probably 10 years. And Zara, I was never a Zara person. It just didn't, I like missed the boat because by the time Zara was big in the US, I was already like saving up for designer stuff.

27:02So I just sort of did not engage. But Uniqlo makes you feel like if you don't engage with Uniqlo, you're sort of a sucker. Like you should buy the best thing that they make because it is a decent thing. So even if you're focused on quality, there's like a real value prop there. I'm curious what you feel like the perception of Uniqlo is in Europe versus the United States essentially. As they started to globalize, like, what do you think your PNC Uniqlo for and what do you think Americans use Uniqlo for? I'm not sure there's such a great, you know, gap in perception between the two. I mean, I haven't I haven't really seen or heard anything that makes me think Europeans regard it differently than Americans.

27:55You know, I guess the kind of like store setup is a little bit different in that in Europe, they've really focused on this strategy of opening like big, attractive stores in kind of central locations. So like you have a store at Opera in Paris. And I know in the OK, so in the US, their first foray into the US was a huge flop. They started their first store was like at a mall in Edison, New Jersey. And American consumers were just flummoxed by this Japanese brand with the like off sizing. And, you know, they hadn't ever seen any advertising. And basically in both, I think the U.S. was like the really high stakes gamble that didn't work out.

28:46But in Europe as well, they had to pull out and kind of regroup. And now they're doing it differently. But I think in both markets, I mean, as far as I can see, people see Uniqlo as, yeah, kind of a good like base to mix in with other things. I mean, Uniqlo, it's very interesting. The executives themselves are like, we can't we don't really think people they don't envision people wearing Uniqlo head to toe. It's always meant as, you know, again, this idea of like a universal donor that is kind of going to be able to go with everything. and you know like one of their best selling products is their short-sleeved crew neck t-shirt which I don't really like I think it's a little too thick for my I agree but it's a cult product and I keep finding you know now that Uniqlo is like well established in my algorithm you know I keep getting all these things that are like the artist that has 50 black t-shirts from Uniqlo and I mean, that's a real it's a real thing that people also use it as kind of a, you know, security blanket.