Exclusive Interview With Clare Waight Keller on Her Uniqlo Capsule Collection

For fashion aficionados, Clare Waight Keller is not an unfamiliar name. The acclaimed British designer has worked at Calvin Klein, Gucci and Chloé. More recently, she was Givenchy’s first female artistic director for three years, succeeding Riccardo Tisci. She was also the brain behind Meghan Markle’s wedding dress for the Royal Wedding to Prince Harry back in 2018. But now, the luxury designer has begun her first foray into an entirely new world, collaborating with Uniqlo for her first collection with the Japanese casualwear giant.

Ahead, we speak to the designer on how she conceptualized Uniqlo : C, and how her signature design ethos manifests in the 30-piece collection. She even put her own spin on the viral round mini bag from Uniqlo, as seen on the fashion girlies of TikTok. 

L'O: Tell us more about how the Uniqlo : C collection came about and what led you to take on the project. 

Clare Waight Keller: This collaboration started very organically. As we worked on this collaboration, we felt very strongly that it was a story, and that perhaps it could develop into its own label. Another deciding factor in my involvement in this project was the ability to create a capsule collection. I have never had my own brand. I've always worked for other designer brands where I've very much been someone who has dived deep into the DNA and into the aesthetics and the ethos of that brand, often quite heritage companies or companies with a very long history or founder. And so, for the first time, I was really going to be working solo on my own with my own idea of what I wanted to create and express myself. This became the chance for me to work on a collection from my own archive and my own personal opinion of effortless and classic style. 

L'O: What has the collaboration process with Uniqlo been like for you? How is it different from working with luxury fashion houses and how did you approach those differences? 

CWK: Usually at luxury houses, we’re racing through two or three seasons and then on to the next. It was a full six months of just working on 30 pieces, all the way from doing the different fabric trials to doing up to five fittings on things, which was not the norm. The entire design and production process is checked and checked again and again before the products are displayed in the store, and the craftsmanship is truly meticulous. So with UNIQLO : C I was able to check the entire process myself.

L'O: How do your British design sensibilities work with Uniqlo’s Japanese casualwear style? 

CWK: The project started with me looking at British fashion and the mix-and-match way people dress here, particularly in London. It’s a real melting pot of styles. So I spent a lot of time people-watching, on Portobello Road or at farmer’s markets or along the South Bank. I have been known to secretly snap pictures of people’s outfits. And I always look through my own library—I must have about 2,000 books—and an archive of magazines. I love flipping through 1960s and 1970s Nova and vintage Italian Vogue. 

For UNIQLO : C, I wanted to bring a certain nonchalance to the fit, so I worked with the same pattern cutter on every single garment to balance the shoulder or ensure the lining was sitting correctly. These are often subtle adjustments, but they require fine workmanship. Adjusting an armhole on a jacket or adding a drawstring to a dress might sound like a small thing, but those are the details that create that sense of casual loucheness. 

L'O: What else can we expect from you and the UNIQLO : C label in the future? 

CWK: I cannot confirm future plans for now, but Uniqlo and I really hope to continue working together!