People who were unfamiliar with the Japanese brand Uniqlo might have been taken aback by the delirium that struck various parts of Texas in October, when five stores—two in Houston area and three around Dallas—opened their doors to the devoted. The lines of shoppers trying to get into Houston’s Memorial City store on opening day snaked throughout that mall, with the patiently fervent, or fervently patient, rewarded with cans of jasmine green tea. (On my visit two days later, the routinely mobbed Zara store across the way looked forsaken.) Just hours after the store opened at 10 a.m. on a school day, the line outside Uniqlo’s spanking new First Colony Mall location, in Sugar Land, was divided into three sections; two inside spanned the length of the mall, and the third spilled outside in the sun, where Uniqlo staffers thoughtfully provided fans stamped with the store’s red-and-white logo.
You would have thought Taylor Swift or Beyoncé tickets were on sale instead of T-shirts and puffer jackets, but such is the passion for this particular brand. My friend Bennie, a fashionista of the first order, had been emailing Uniqlo HQ for years begging executives to open in Texas, with no response. (Bennie was at Memorial City on opening day, claiming—falsely—that she just happened to be in the neighborhood. “I tried to pretend it wasn’t a big deal, but it was a big deal,” she confessed to me.) I was no less immune. Whenever I went to visit family in New York or Philadelphia, I made a pilgrimage to Uniqlo even before unpacking my luggage. I once did the same in London, so after many years I still get emails with prices in pounds, no matter how hard I try to switch the tab to U.S. dollars. As of last week, I will no longer be forced to stuff affordable cashmere into my suitcase.
Uniqlo now boasts 2,500 stores worldwide, with 70 in North America. Once Texans proved their shopping mettle on its website—which took a surprising “several years,” according to Nicolas Cessot, head of marketing for Uniqlo North America—the company started scouting locations around Dallas and Houston. Unlike the chain stores that lash themselves to the latest trends, Uniqlo tries to distance itself from fast fashion and is big on stressing that its clothing is for everyday life. In planning the latest openings, “we looked for locations that serve as both retail and cultural hubs,” said Cessot, places that are “destinations where the community comes together” and where Uniqlo can get busy “fostering meaningful connections through in-store events.”
I’m sure such virtuous decisions are important to today’s shoppers, but for me, it’s about the cool clothes. Uniqlo is first and foremost a Japanese brand, so there’s that chic minimal vibe combined with, in general, higher-quality materials than you find at your average mall retailer. The clothes manage to be classic but not boring, along the lines of the stealth wealth phenom but at a hoi polloi price point. Take the ubiquitous T-shirts made of durable and softer Supima cotton: Uniqlo’s cost around $24.90 for men, beating the $30 one at Banana Republic and knocking out the “organically grown cotton” one from Paul Smith at $115. Plus they come in many more color choices. The same lower price point and color options have made Uniqlo’s classically styled cashmere sweaters—$99.90 for women—a go-to. (That’s for the crew neck, V-neck, and/or turtleneck. The designers don’t seem to go for sorority-sister cable knits.) Finally, there are all those puffer jackets, which are light enough to actually wear in Houston but also do the job on a blustery day in the Northeast—and can be squished into their own matching travel bags.
My favorites, though, are Uniqlo’s designer collaborations, which make the works of some top designers (and some I had never heard of) available to us common folk. I have a Uniqlo+J Jil Sander poplin shift dress I bought years ago for something like $30 that still makes me feel like a million bucks. (You can find some survivors on eBay, sometimes for more than the original cost, and certainly for less than an authentic Jil Sander beanie costs today.) In the past few years, Uniqlo has featured lines from Ines de la Fressange, Christophe Lemaire, JW Anderson, and more recently Marimekko. Its most recent designer collection is by Clare Waight Keller, the brand’s new creative director. She designed Meghan Markle’s wedding dress and is the former artistic director of Givenchy. Her Uniqlo collection would work for woman of all ages who want to look put together but not costumed, at a price that would cost less than dinner for two at an affordable restaurant. It is probably best for my wallet that those collaborations are usually only available online.
The good news, as of last week, is that everything else, plus some new additions, is now available right in Houston—more or less. Uniqlo did not go the Galleria route, much to my surprise. Instead, the stores are located farther outside of town, in areas nearer to Chinatown and Koreatown, where customers may already be familiar with the brand. My shopping options, then, were these: a twenty-minute sprint due west on Interstate 10 to Memorial City or braving the Southwest Freeway to Sugar Land (44 minutes or two days, depending on traffic). I opted for both.
I was probably the oldest and least hip person in line at the former, surrounded on Indigenous Peoples’ Day by some of the most smartly dressed kids in Houston, many of them Asian American, who had chosen to spend their holiday, yes, waiting to get into Uniqlo. “The Asian customer knows us from overseas,” one New York executive told me, an odd comment given that most of these kids are native Texans familiar with online shopping. The Texan/Asian customer—and most Uniqlo customers everywhere—know the company from its website, which might account for the somewhat muted reaction once we all made it inside the actual store. I will say that the super enthused taiko drum performers (wearing Uniqlo-branded kimono jackets) certainly helped pass the time in line, as did meeting so many folks from China, India, and Vietnam, as well as Katy and Sharpstown, otherwise known as a typical Houston crowd. I wouldn’t say that actually shopping was a letdown, but seeing that the stock in the Houston Uniqlo stores didn’t really differ from that sold everywhere else—and online, of course—was like running into a good friend I’d just seen a few days back. Yes, I was happy for the meetup, but there wasn’t much new to say. When I spied the crew neck sweaters beautifully arrayed on store shelves like a cashmere rainbow, my must-buy bell remained silent because I already own every color I want.
Still, Uniqlo had found other ways to make its newest stores feel unique. A well-placed stack of free branded magazines bridged the Texas/Japan gap by featuring ethnically and racially diverse stories about statewide Uniqlo fans that included, among others, a cowgirl, a pitmaster, a former pro football player and—of course—a gorgeous Dallas model. (“The Spirit of Texas”/ “Made for all. Made for Texas,” was the title. The copy seemed impeccably—not to mention shrewdly—targeted at our self-referential, exceptionalist hearts.) In addition, local artists had been added to Uniqlo’s famous T-shirt cannon, so the graffiti seen on Houston streets by locals Donkeeboy, his white-haired Donkeemom, and David Maldonado, a.k.a. CapDavJon, had been adapted for designs on clothing available for purchase. The artists had adorned tees with street art takes on a cool-looking space helmet, cobalt-blue cowboy boots and a fuchsia cowboy hat, and a bouquet of native wildflowers in the shape of Texas. I ran into the Donkee family—a.k.a. Alex Roman Jr. and his mom, Sylvia—checking out the goods at the First Colony store. Both were pretty wowed to have been chosen to represent Houston for Uniqlo. “I thought it was a scam at first,” Alex told me.
I didn’t buy anything on either visit, though I did covet the Japanese notebooks and pencils given away to the earliest Sugar Land customers. My closet is already well-stocked with Uniqlo, and even though the weather has (sort of) broken, I was able to resist a cool tweed jacket. The checkout line was long, and I wanted to beat the traffic back into town. It was enough to feel at one with my people, as we inspected those coolly understated if assiduously familiar puffers, sweaters, and tees. Besides, now I can always come back.
