Japanese Brand Uniqlo Opens Doors In India

As the beloved Japanese brand Uniqlo opens doors in India, ageless cool is yours for the taking

- Nidhi Gupta

Early in the 2011 blockbuster romcom Crazy Stupid Love, alpha male lounge lizard Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling) meets frumpy, stuck-in-a-midlife-crisis

Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) at the mall for a “makeover date”. Once Weaver’s divested of his trusty New Balance 407s, Palmer takes charge: Between advice like “You could rebuild your entire wardrobe with 16 items” and far too many credit card swipes, he implores: “Cal, you’ve got to be better than The Gap!”

Standing outside Uniqlo’s flagship store in Tokyo’s Ginza district, I wonder if Palmer would’ve approved of my four-hour shopping spree around the 12-storey store. Not just for the seriousness with which I’ve gone about the self-appointed mission (“How fast can you get rid of ¥50,000?”), but for the finesse of Uniqlo’s plentiful range of clothing itself.

Two years before Crazy Stupid Love hit theatre screens, Tadashi Yanai, Founder and CEO of Fast Retailing – and the richest man in Japan – was reportedly telling the American press that he wanted to buy The Gap. By the turn of the decade, Uniqlo (owned by Fast Retailing) had truly begun to grow beyond Japan’s shores and rule the high-street space. Wallet-friendly, eco-friendly and perfectly savvy, the Uniqlo LifeWear concept has struck such a chord with post-materialism urban millennials that today there are over 1,200 Uniqlo stores in the world, including massive flagships in New York, Paris, London and Shanghai. Where there’s a large, young and diverse workforce, Uniqlo can’t be far behind.