Will Clare Waight Keller's Uniqlo Take Over Fashion?

Clare Waight Keller Is Uniqlo’s New Creative Director! Clare Waight Keller’s debut Uniqlo: C collection launched last September, and it’s safe to say that the new sub-label has been a success. Today, she’s here in New York to show off the new fall season, and she comes with a new title: creative director, meaning she now oversees not just the Uniqlo: C line she was hired to develop last year, but also the brand’s core offerings, which so many of us know and love and wear so often. You know which ones I mean: all the cashmere, the merino, basically anything under the LifeWear umbrella. “What you’ll start to notice,” Waight Keller says, “is that within some of those core programs there’ll be new fashion shapes, and there’ll be new silhouettes that drop every other month, to really bring in the freshness.” Among the developments that will register, she explains, are updates to the overall color palette. “I’ve got my hands all over that.” On the women’s side, look for more femininity, more prints, and more exploration in terms of pattern and cut, and younger, trending silhouettes. “Uniqlo appeals to such a big audience,” she says, “but a big chunk that they really capture is that younger age bracket. It’s a fast-moving market, so there’s a lot to learn there.” Waight Keller hails from the salons of Paris; she was at Givenchy for three years and at Chloé for six before that, and she’s upfront about the learning curve at Uniqlo. “In the fashion industry, especially luxury,