Clare Waight Keller has taken on a rare new role: global creative director for Uniqlo, overseeing both womenswear and menswear at the fast-fashion retailer. The move marks a dramatic shift for the designer who rose to prominence in Paris at Chloé and Givenchy, where she designed Meghan Markle’s wedding dress. Waight Keller says her new work at Uniqlo is rooted in ease and accessibility, a response to what she calls a challenging fashion industry in which prices have climbed and sustainability has become an urgent question. “It is a different industry to 20 years ago. It’s a challenging time,” she notes, reflecting on how the business has evolved while remaining centered on product that people can actually wear every day.
Waight Keller’s career began in Britain and rose to global prominence during nearly a decade in Paris. She led Chloé and then Givenchy, where the wedding gown for Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, became one of the defining fashion moments of the decade. Now, the Brummie designer is stepping off a London bus near Piccadilly Circus to head into Uniqlo’s offices, a striking image of a couture‑trained talent choosing to work at mass-market scale. Uniqlo is part of the Fast Retailing group, the world’s third-largest clothing retailer after Zara and H&M, with annual sales of about $21 billion and more than 2,500 Uniqlo stores worldwide. By comparison, the combined footprint of Givenchy and Chloé has long been a fraction of that. Waight Keller, who is 55, says the shift to Uniqlo is less a retreat from fashion and more a pivot toward a business model she believes can sustain design, accessibility and longevity.
The job that awaits her is broad: she is now charged with shaping Uniqlo’s womenswear and, for the first time at the company, menswear as well. She is the first outsider to hold either role in a brand that has grown through a strategy of affordable basics, high-volume production and a series of curated high-fashion collaborations. Waight Keller is also the first head of both lines at Uniqlo, a rarity in Japan where insiders traditionally fill senior creative posts. Uniqlo’s expansion into high-fashion collaborations under founder Tadashi Yanai has long been a selling point—its +J collaboration with Jil Sander in 2009 is often cited as turning the label into a serious design platform, even before Waight Keller’s arrival.
Her philosophy at Uniqlo centers on what she calls ease and universality. She criticizes what she views as the era-defining clutter of the fashion system: excessive price points, hurried marketing cycles and a runway‑driven hype machine that can eclipse practical product. “Prices are very high,” she says—an issue she has long attributed to the structure of luxury fashion. In explaining Uniqlo’s appeal, she points to the range of sizes, including XXS to XXXL, and the way the brand designs to mix and match across collections. “The T-shirt goes with the skirt, which goes with the trousers,” she adds, underscoring her aim to keep dressing simple and affordable without sacrificing quality.
She began her work with Uniqlo in 2020, after being approached by Yukihiro Katsuta, head of research and development for Uniqlo Japan. The collaboration started with a 30-piece capsule collection for women in 2023, Uniqlo: C, and has since expanded. Waight Keller is now not only the first head of women’s and men’s wear for Uniqlo, but also the first company outsider to hold either position—a rare honor in Japan’s corporate culture. The partnership is framed as a response to the challenges of fast fashion: produce enough to stay relevant, but with a focus on longevity and practical design. Waight Keller says she designs around 250 styles per season, a deliberate constraint when compared with some ultra-fast-fashion operations that churn out thousands of new items daily.
To bolster her method, she draws inspiration from a global scouting of trends. “I’ve got my eyes on stalks,” she says. The trigger for her is seeing a thread in New York, then London, Tokyo, and beyond. In women’s wear, she leans on Seoul’s youth culture, where she sees a strong tide of influence from K‑pop, K‑beauty and K‑drama on Netflix. She demonstrates by showing a photo of a Seoul street ensemble—a teenager in grey trousers with oversized boots, a graphic gray hoodie and a bold blue faux‑fur coat—and says that if you want to know what trousers will be worn in 18 months, look at today’s teenagers. Waight Keller’s predicted shift toward broader silhouettes and volume—she notes that skinny jeans were once controversial but later became staples—has become a touchstone for her forecasting.
Waight Keller’s life outside work also informs her design ethos. She lives in London with her husband, an architect, and their children. She keeps a close watch on her vintage favorites, which include Helmut Lang, Saint Laurent, Prada, Jil Sander and John Galliano, though she draws a clear line about what she will or won’t wear in certain settings. “There are some untouchables,” she jokes, insisting that certain pieces are too special to be worn casually. This sense of balance—between high style and sensible everyday wear—has become a throughline in her Uniqlo strategy.
Her public stance on sustainability and the environmental footprint of fashion is measured. Critics have long argued that mass-market brands fuel consumption by encouraging new purchases. Waight Keller acknowledges the concern and defends her role by citing Uniqlo’s approach to design iteration and durability. She notes that the company’s ground floor often hosts the Uniqlo U line, a unisex range designed to be versatile and long-lasting. She also points to the balance between performance fabrics and longevity: while many garments rely on synthetics for function, she argues that the goal is to extend garment life and reduce waste. “The polyester skirt I’m wearing doesn’t wrinkle, so it looks great. Also when I wash it, it’s going to stay good. I’m going to keep it that much longer,” she explains. In doing so, she contends that Uniqlo can offer affordable basics that are built to endure, while still enabling frequent updates through collaborations and capsule launches.
Waight Keller also acknowledges the ongoing debate about fast fashion and the industry’s responsibility. She emphasizes that her design output is deliberately lean—about 250 styles per season—as a counterpoint to brands that flood the market with new products every week. She also contrasts Uniqlo’s model with the model of more volatile fast-fashion players, noting that the company’s collaborations with high-fashion designers provide a pathway for elevated design within a mass-market framework. She mentions her own run‑of‑show ambitions for the future: “I’m designing 18 months ahead.” That cadence underscores a serious attempt to balance trend responsiveness with product longevity and clear design philosophy.
The career arc is telling: Waight Keller left the haute‑fashion world in part to pursue a broader, more inclusive business model. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, even included a Waight Keller–designed Uniqlo trench coat in her personal ShopMy collection, a nod to the designer’s continued relevance in contemporary wardrobes beyond the catwalk. Waight Keller’s push toward “ease” is intentional, she says, a response to a fashion climate where the “pizzazz” of couture and the spectacle of runway showmanship can overwhelm the practicalities of daily dressing. She rejects the “dictators of fashion”—the glossy magazines and loud social-media narratives—that can distort what people wear. Instead, she envisions a shopping experience in which a shopper can walk into a high‑street store and assemble a look with pieces that mix and match across collections.
If Waight Keller is right, the next era of fashion could tilt away from the myth that prestige fashion is only accessible at luxury price points or through exclusive channels. Her Uniqlo work seeks to prove that high style and affordability can coexist with a sense of responsibility toward the planet and toward consumers who want to look good without overspending. The brand’s relatively restrained marketing—by contrast to some of its higher-profile Runway‑to‑Retail peers—places emphasis on product and fit, a formula Waight Keller believes translates across markets and generations. Meghan’s trench from ShopMy may be a symbolic bridge between a couture legacy and a mass-market future. The question now is whether Waight Keller’s measured, design-forward approach to everyday wear can redefine what “high fashion” means in a world where the speed of trends is matched only by the speed of online attention.