British designer Clare Waight Keller has logged time at some of the biggest fashion brands in the world. Born in Birmingham, England, she moved to New York to work on lifestyle labels like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein and eventually to Paris to oversee artistic direction at luxury houses Chloé and Givenchy. But when she struck up a partnership with Uniqlo in 2023 to create the Uniqlo : C collection for the juggernaut Japanese brand, she pulled inspiration from somewhere closer to home.
"The start of Uniqlo : C really came out of me working on a collection that was really inspired by Europe, and London in particular," she explains. "I think because I've worked for so many different companies, I wanted a place that really expressed me more than anything. The portrayal of fashion that I really love is so much more about style than the idea of always having cutting-edge pieces.
It's about this sense of timelessness mixed with modernity, and London always has had that for me." Prior seasons of C have focused on different neighborhoods around the English capital; for fall 2024, Keller looked to the Barbican Center, a brutalist performing-arts center that opened in 1982. "I've always had a fascination with the Barbican," she says.
"I wanted to just bring in the architecture, the brutalist nature, the fact that it is kind of a city within a city—it really sort of expresses something interesting." UNIQLO The result is a collection of pieces that blend Keller's signature softness .