A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

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A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

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Twice a season, the creative teams at Uniqlo meet to present collection concepts to executives and the board of Fast Retailing, including Tadashi Yanai, the company’s founder and mastermind. Like many of his micromanaging contemporaries, from Mickey Drexler to Bernard Arnault, Yanai’s level of involvement is astonishing. He personally looks at every single piece that the teams put out, often calling on the opinion of his wife, Teruyo Nagaoka, who has no formal role at the company but whose taste he trusts implicitly.

A few months back in one of these product reviews—which included presentations by Clare Waight Keller and Jonathan Anderson—multiple people in the room said that Tadashi was even more opinionated and riled up than usual. He kiboshed a Uniqlo U collection designed by an in-house studio in the wake of Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran’s departure, and was generally dismissive of a lot of the presentation. Of course, Yanai is exacting no matter what, but something seemed off this time. Waight Keller, whose ability to communicate easily with Yanai and the rest of the Japanese executive team apparently helped her ascend to become creative director of all of Uniqlo, seemed visibly confused by his reactions. (Neither Uniqlo nor Waight Keller immediately responded to requests for comment.)

Some people in the room dismissed it as Yanai acting imperiously; he is, after all, 77 years old, and has spent the last 42 years turning a family tailoring business into a global empire. He was a proto-data miner, using a vertically integrated supply chain and unsentimental mindset to build Uniqlo into a $20 billion-a-year-in-sales business—far larger than Gap ($3.5 billion) but still trailing the trendier and broader Zara ($30.4 billion).

But Yanai has a lot to be pleased about. I’m told that J.W. Anderson for Uniqlo is the most successful of its lines in terms of sell-through. Visit any airport in Europe, and you’ll note that J.W. Anderson for Uniqlo is the preferred jeans brand these days. That may sound surprising to Americans, for whom Uniqlo remains relatively exotic—even as the company generated about $1.9 billion in U.S. revenues in 2025, up 25 percent from a year earlier and essentially the same as Banana Republic. But that’s probably because Yanai, for all his success, still hasn’t nailed the advertising piece in the U.S., where the company’s LifeWear proposal falls on deaf ears.

And yet Yanai got lucky as the culture of consumption changed, and product became the marketing. His obsession with hiring star designers to create long-running collections—first, Jil Sander, then Lemaire, Anderson, and Waight Keller—also brought him a different sort of exposure. Fashion industry insiders looking for a high-quality alternative to the Gap became early adopters—Heattech turtlenecks are practically a cult item—and the linkage with brand-name designers offered marketing opportunities that wouldn’t have existed otherwise, and continues to this day. A final Uniqlo U collection with Lemaire and Tran, expected to release this fall, will undoubtedly result in a flood of profiles and exposure. The on-and-off nature of +J, the collaboration with Sander, stoked endless fascination. Yanai may have failed to succeed at high fashion—Helmut Lang, which he acquired more than 20 years ago and never managed to get right, remains a drag for the company—but high-fashion designers succeed at Uniqlo.

Yanai is still spouting off his opinions, in part, because Uniqlo obviously works incredibly well with him in charge. Fast Retailing just raised its full-year outlook, expecting bigger sales and profits in 2026 than originally anticipated. But it’s also a case of founder syndrome, and a lack of a real succession plan. Yanai has made it clear that his two sons, Kazumi and Koji, will not be taking over when the time comes. Unlike some of his counterparts, though, there is a deep executive bench within the ranks of Fast Retailing who could potentially do the job. In 2021, Daisuke Tsukagoshi was named C.E.O. of daily operations—effectively, C.O.O.—and there is a robust team backing him up. Still, Yanai’s original plan was to retire at 70. That was seven years ago. The more likely outcome is that he will live forever.

The folks behind Phia—co-founded by Phoebe Gates, who refers to herself as “Bill Gates’s daughter” in a paid Instagram advertisement for the shopping app—have been accused of “cookie stuffing” by Bloomberg. A rep for Phia claims the “stuffing”—essentially, taking online credit for driving sales it didn’t drive—was a coding accident and has been fixed. [Tech Crunch]

Come for Molly Young’s book recommendations, stay for the New York City summer trend report. [The Life and Errors of Molly Young]

Friend-of-Line Sheet Alice Cavanagh surveys Paris’s health and wellness scene. She spared my beloved Lagreeness. [How to Spend It]

Instagram Face is creeping out Jia Tolentino. [The New Yorker]

Alexis Page, one of the most influential people in the beauty industry, chats for two hours with Magasin’s Laura Reilly about her beauty and wellness habits, her likes, her dislikes, etcetera. I predict this is going to be a top-five converting newsletter for Laura. [High Touch]

Jannik Sinner’s Wimbledon win is a boon for Gucci. [British Vogue]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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