Who is Clare Waight Keller

One year after the launch of UNIQLO: C, a sub-brand of the Japanese company famous for its accessible and functional basics, the line’s designer Clare Waight Keller announced that she has become the creative director of the entire brand. This means she will continue to work on the UNIQLO: C collections but will also oversee the general offerings of UNIQLO. With a past as the artistic director of fashion houses such as Chloé and Givenchy, it's unlikely that Keller will hold back from encouraging the brand to broaden its stylistic horizons. Soon, we might discover new silhouettes and accessories in UNIQLO's red-and-white stores, a direction the brand—known mainly for its timeless lines—might need after all to advance in the international landscape of accessible fashion. «What you’ll start to notice», the designer said in an interview with Vogue Business, «is that within some of those core programs there’ll be new fashion shapes, and there’ll be new silhouettes that drop every other month, to really bring in the freshness».

Originally from Birmingham, England, Clare Waight Keller is an alumna of Ravensbourne College of Art and the Royal College of Art, where she studied fashion. Each of the designer’s early career milestones reflects the spirit of the times: in the 1990s, she worked as a stylist in New York for Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, and in 2000, she was chosen by Tom Ford for the womenswear of Gucci. In 2004, she left the position, and after a year, she became the artistic director of Pringle of Scotland. Her entry into the ateliers of Chloé came in 2011, (the year when boho chic, the aesthetic linked to the 1970s and flower power, began to establish itself in contemporary fashion), while in 2017, she replaced Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy, becoming the first woman to hold the role of artistic director at the French maison. In 2018, she designed Meghan Markle's wedding dress, two years before leaving the maison. Judging by the professional experiences that have marked Keller's career, her adventure at UNIQLO seems to have all the necessary prerequisites to become a successful chapter in the brand's history, which is still at the height of its popularity. To discover what image UNIQLO’s new face will have under Clare Waight Keller's creative direction, we will have to wait for her first collection.