Japanese Fashion-retailer Uniqlo is known for their clean yet high quality products and innovative look on fashion. I am a big fan of some of their products such as the basic cashmere sweaters that have an excellent price point! Another great venture was the collaboration with Jil Sander on the J+ line that ran over multiple seasons and turned out some great quality pieces with modern and understated silhouettes, sadly the collaboration ended last year.


Nevertheless, the retailer still involves some innovative partners such as Japanese label Undercover and  designer Nicola Formichetti who brings an artsy touch to the otherwise minimalistic pieces. His recent designs for their newest clothing-line "LifeWear" look very wearable and consist of some louder prints but otherwise stays true to the brand. His creative touch comes via the headwear pieces that are seen in the image above and are probably only meant for the showroom.

What's more interesting about these garments is Uniqlo's modern approach to fashion. Instead of going for simple trends, the brand wants to push its limits on the technology-side of fashion by making their "LifeWear" pieces a series such as the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5. The garments stay simple, but will be innovated each season with new fabrics, technologies and features. While one could argue, that adding new fabrics to traditional pieces such as Jackets and T-Shirt is the core of fashion, I think that the approach is pretty interesting.

Uniqlo has always been known for embracing new technologies and experimenting with new fabrics. This tradition of innovation will now simply be continued under the moniker "LifeWear". However, I think that the thought of stepping away from being fashionable to being useful is a modern look on the industry and offers new chances for growth. Some of their former projects such as Heattech, Ultra Light Down or Ultra Stretch Jeans have already had a great impact on the fashion market and have been copied all around the world.

The retailer certainly wants to position itself as a leader in terms of functionality and innovation. By doing this Uniqlo steps away from other fashion retailers such as H&M or Zara who got famous by selling "fast-fashion" with minimal pricing, high trend-affinity and short garment-durability. Instead of competing with these two powerhouses, the brand is now facing competition from a different fashion sector: the sports market.

Nike has recently shown similar tendencies by introducing it's FuelBand and Nike+ products which go far beyond simple sports gear. While the Nike+ pieces count your steps and therefore give you a pretty good overview on your athletic evolution as a runner, the FuelBand clearly aims at changing our everyday lifes. It is supposed to count calories, steps and other factors that influence a healthy lifestyle such as sleeping cycles.In our modern times of constant WiFi connectivity the bond between man and machine seems to get closer and closer.

With their "LifeWear" line Uniqlo aims to step in right here as well, providing products that do not only look good but have a purpose in enhancing lifestyle and health. I think that this an extremely interesting new field of fashion and I am looking forward to new innovations in the future!

picture via Business of Fashion