A high end Fashion designer coming together with a high Street Fashion retailer is hardly reinventing the wheel and is never going to break the cogs of the institution and bring down governments. But when those two apparel brands happen to be the former artistic director of Hermes and Lacoste, who honed his skills at some of France’s most prominent Fashion houses and the other being the global fast fashion Japanese retailer, known for their parred down, intelligent, good quality and understated pieces. Well, now that does start to grab your attention.
Uniqlo as a brand have worked with an impressive roster of collaborators in the past, these have included such noted figures as Jil Sander, Pharrell, Peter Saville, Kim Jones, Terry Richardson and Novak Djokovic. This season sees them partner with Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran(see below). UNIQLO AND LEMAIRE have come together to offer a timeless style to everyday essential pieces that, as you would expect, high quality materials and uncompromising focus on quality at a highly competitive price. The collection brings a sense of refined, yet approachable confidence to items that you can wear every day and for any occasion. The collection designed for everyday living offers, attentive details influenced by the cosmopolitan parisian lifestyle. This LifeWear, as it is known, is elevated with style that fully respects the needs and requirements of the individual.
Lemaire has harboured for some time a desire to work with Uniqlo, as he believes, “Our philosophy is close to Uniqlo’s. Uniqlo designs quality garments for everyday life. Uniqlo is not trend-driven. Everything is about the product and technological innovations. Their philosophy is strong and modern”.
This collaborative relationship bossomed from a shared philosophy, that Lemaire sees it as being, “Lemaire is not a luxury brand. We try to do qualitative garments that will last. In this sense, that is also what Uniqlo is doing. Uniqlo challenges our conscientiousness as designers because we know we will dress many different people across the world. Therefore we have to be very attentive to proportions and style. It has to fit everybody’s lifestyle and morphology without compromising the style. This is a very interesting exercise”.
