Christophe Lemaire Democratizes the Outerwear of the Future
Earlier this year, Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran, overseers of both French fashion house Lemaire and UNIQLO U, welcomed the warmer months with UNIQLO U's “Layers of Spring” collection, a lightweight system of crisp shirts, flowing shorts, and paper-thin coats designed to be worn atop each other without rendering its wearer hot or bothered.
Logic would dictate that UNIQLO U follow up with the “Layers of Fall” later that year but, no. Instead of being constrained by the whims of a single season, UNIQLO U is moving toward “Future Layers.”
Have Lemaire and Tran cracked the future of layering, as this collection's name suggests? Yes. But, to be fair, they did that a long time ago. This is merely their effort to disseminate the good word to the masses.
UNIQLO U (and Lemaire, for that matter) is made distinct from other fast-leaning clothing collections by the cohesiveness of its vision, how every garment can be mixed and matched into a satisfying blend of likeminded colors and shapes.
UNIQLO U “Future Layers,” arriving globally on September 26, is yet another investigation into the art of layering.
This season, for instance, UNIQLO U proposes a washed-out grey T-shirt beneath a navy twill work shirt and a dark puffer jacket, both boxy and unusually clean for a piece of thickly insulated outerwear.
Alternatively, tuck that oversized shirt into wide-leg brown slacks, unbutton a little to reveal the white tee worn underneath, and throw a water-repellent long coat atop for a similarly slick but entirely distinct silhouette.
This is the modular wardrobe of UNIQLO U. Even when winter demands excessive layering, the muted colors and streamlined cuts bring it all together.
UNIQLO and its other designer-led diffusion lines epitomize the factor that makes it stand apart from its affordable peers: these are basic but real clothes done about as well as they possibly could be.
This is exactly what makes UNIQLO the anti-fast fashion fast-fashion brand
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