Hana Tajima for Uniqlo: Design, Collections and Collaboration

Hana Tajima’s collaboration with Uniqlo began in 2015, with its first collections reaching Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. Her project portfolio records a partnership that subsequently expanded into other countries. Its history is best explored through the clothes themselves: the cuts, colours and ideas that changed from one collection to another. Hana Tajima, Uniqlo collaboration portfolio.

For the designer’s earlier work, Amani’s account of six creative voices in modest fashion provides further context.

Beginning in Southeast Asia

A report from Jakarta gives the beginning a tangible setting. On 30 July 2015, Wolipop journalist Arina Yulistara covered the Indonesian introduction at Grand Indonesia and spoke with Uniqlo executive Taku Ozawa. Her account placed that arrival after releases in Malaysia and Singapore, showing how the regional introduction unfolded across different places.

The garments had recognisable details. A scarf incorporated a triangular cut in its upper section; blouses and tunics used asymmetric shapes. A skirt carried a knot at the centre, while long dresses appeared in burgundy, navy and off-white. The report also identified a long-sleeved underlayer. These were components of a wardrobe, with different relationships between an outer shape and the clothing beneath it.

The combination gave the collaboration more than one point of entry. Someone could be interested in the head covering, the unequal lines of a tunic or the construction of a skirt. The early collection already contained several design questions within its common name. Wolipop, Jakarta launch report, 30 July 2015.

In a separate Tokyo interview that December, Uniqlo design director Naoki Takizawa discussed choosing collaborators whose ideas suited the company’s LifeWear approach. Hana Tajima appeared among the designers named in that discussion. His account placed collaboration within the work of developing everyday clothing: the appeal of a famous name was only part of the decision. It supplies a corporate perspective on the setting in which the partnership developed. Wolipop, interview with Naoki Takizawa, December 2015.

Designing a wardrobe in 2016

For spring 2016, a journey became a design reference. Tajima told ELLE that she had driven from San Diego to New York before starting the collection. Changing scenery and the experience of prolonged movement informed its colours, fluidity and mixed influences. She wanted to convey a body travelling through a landscape, giving the clothes a particular atmosphere. ELLE, interview with Hana Tajima, February 2016.

In an email interview with Goltune, Tajima described the collection through the way an actual wardrobe accumulates. Different pieces can come from different inspirations yet acquire a relationship through the person who wears them. Her task was to bring those varied starting points into a collection that felt coherent.

She singled out the long-sleeved draped dress. Its skirt combined layers and pleating, and she described enjoying the movement those elements created. Although she thought of her own style as somewhat tomboyish, the piece belonged to a renewed interest in wearing dresses. That preference makes the design account personal without requiring every wearer to approach it in the same way.

A wardrobe organised around one person’s choices can accommodate both a favourite dress and quite different separates. Tajima’s description allows those differences to remain visible: the collection’s coherence comes from how the pieces can be interpreted together, rather than from making every garment resemble the next. Goltune, original email interview.

Vogue’s February report recorded that variety in specific clothes: subdued grey and dusty rose hijabs, marigold trousers, a pale pink dress with an asymmetric hem, high-waisted flared jeans and a black maxi skirt with a metal-ring zip. Colour, uneven edges and a conspicuous fastening supplied different kinds of interest within the range. The headscarf was one part of that wider design vocabulary. Vogue, February 2016.

Asked by Teen Vogue about designing within modest clothing requirements, Tajima compared the process with poetry. A structure can prompt an idea that unrestricted expression might never produce. Her explanation treated a design boundary as a creative condition: it could encourage an unexpected solution, rather than determine the entire appearance of the finished garment. Teen Vogue, interview with Hana Tajima, March 2016.

The Japanese introduction was announced in June 2016. Uniqlo’s announcement scheduled the autumn/winter collection for 30 June and described loose jeans, rayon blouses, long dresses and hijabs. Its garment table also included jackets, skirts, tunics, high-neck tops and inner head coverings. Original patterns drawn by Tajima appeared among the designs.

The range therefore brought headwear into an assortment that also addressed the rest of an outfit. A blouse, a long skirt and an underlayer each have a different place in that arrangement. Looking at the categories together makes the collaboration easier to understand than treating every item as a version of the same garment.

The announcement also identified slits and generous silhouettes as features of the design. Those details show the attention given to movement and outline in the company’s presentation, while leaving the suitability of any individual combination with its wearer. Uniqlo, Japanese launch announcement, 14 June 2016.

Making the campaign with Yuna

Tajima’s February 2016 conversation with Malaysian magazine EH! connected the design of a scarf with the making of a campaign. She described introducing a simple cut that could be arranged in several ways. The idea allowed variation within the scarf itself, giving its wearer something to interpret.

For the campaign, singer Yuna was her first choice. The two had wanted to work together for some time. Although both lived in the United States, being on different coasts made meeting difficult. Tajima recalled wanting someone who appeared natural in front of the camera; the photographer was also a friend. She remembered the shoot as several days spent together, with the camera present.

That account places familiar working relationships behind the finished photographs. Casting was part of creating a particular mood around the clothes. The scarf’s adaptable design and the campaign’s relaxed atmosphere belonged to the same presentation, with the people making it contributing their own rapport. EH!, “Sejenak Bersama Hana Tajima”, February 2016.

Eliza Jordan’s Whitewall report gives a different view of the spring collection: its New York preview. The event included a styling demonstration by Tajima and a performance by Yuna. Clothes were presented through both their arrangement on a body and the gathering around them.

Jordan also spoke with Yuna, who described followers in the United States asking where they could find the collaboration. Bringing the range to New York answered a question she had already encountered from her audience. This is a specific account of interest expressed to a campaign participant, rather than a measurement of every American customer’s response.

Tajima discussed her own preferences at the preview, including tunics and linen pieces. Hearing those choices alongside the demonstration made the event an opportunity to encounter the designer’s interpretation of her work. Yuna’s presence added a participant’s perspective on the people who were following the project from elsewhere. Whitewall, report from the New York collection preview, 2016.

More seasons, places and interpretations

By January 2017, Tajima was explaining another problem to Canadian Living: an autumn collection would reach countries that remained hot. She described looking for fabrics that could be layered and using texture to suggest the appearance of something heavier. A seasonal identity did not have to depend entirely on physical weight.

Her process began with fabric on a form. For spring, she wanted movement and lightness alongside a more sculptural quality, allowing fluid cloth and defined shapes to coexist. Working directly with material helped her consider how the design would relate to a body.

She also described reviewing customer feedback with the Uniqlo team from season to season. The interview makes development sound continuous: a collection could retain its character while changing in response to what had been learned. Climate, construction and feedback were all part of that work, rather than separate questions addressed after the clothes had been designed. Canadian Living, interview with Hana Tajima, 27 January 2017.

Speaking to Liz Guber for ELLE Canada the following month, Tajima explained that she did not always know what a collection would become before beginning to drape. Asymmetry emerged through the process and helped emphasise movement. The making itself could disclose a direction.

Guber described tunics with ties that altered their fit, collarless linen blouses and softly pleated trousers. A lavender duster coat and striped cropped trousers also appeared in the account. These details gave the Canadian introduction a more particular identity than the broad label of modest clothing.

Tajima’s work with the company involved frequent travel to Tokyo and a shared interest in refining individual garments. She also described the point at which a design passed to its wearer: details and alternative arrangements could let someone interpret the piece for herself. The designer established possibilities, while the person dressing supplied another part of the finished appearance. ELLE Canada, interview by Liz Guber, 16 February 2017.

The autumn/winter 2017 announcement put texture and coordinated colour at the centre of the collection. Uniqlo identified tweed as a new material and introduced a belted long coat. Draping and tucks supplied further ways to give the clothes shape.

The presentation also proposed combining shades from the same colour family at different depths. This offered a way to create variation while maintaining a close relationship between the pieces. Texture could then contribute alongside colour, rather than every element competing for attention.

Headwear remained within the range: the announcement’s categories included stoles, inner hijabs and headbands, alongside clothing such as trousers, skirts and tunics. These names describe different components of a possible outfit. The collection brought them into one seasonal proposal while leaving scope for an individual combination. The launch calendar also varied: the Southeast Asian introduction began in June, while the Japanese announcement scheduled the principal release for July and some items for August. Uniqlo, autumn/winter 2017 announcement, 28 June 2017.

Uniqlo executive Yuki Yamada offered a retrospective corporate account in a 2020 Inside Retail Asia interview. He connected the collaboration with demand in Malaysia and Indonesia. He also discussed customers who saw a hijab in the range and wondered whether the clothes were exclusively for Muslims; the company intended a broader audience.

His account identified further expansion to the Philippines in spring/summer 2016; China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia later that year; and Russia in spring/summer 2017. The chronology describes where the company offered the work, rather than how every place received it.

Asked about performance, Yamada declined to disclose sales figures while describing the response positively. Keeping both parts of that answer matters. There is a documented international rollout and a favourable assessment from a company executive, but the interview does not provide figures from which to calculate the collaboration’s commercial results. Inside Retail Asia, interview with Yuki Yamada, 16 November 2020.

Changing length, texture and imagery

For spring/summer 2018, one change concerned the length of selected garments. Uniqlo’s January announcement said customer requests had led to shorter and longer versions of some pieces. The adjustment offered another way for the collection to accommodate different preferences without requiring every design to take the same form.

Linen had a larger place in the assortment, and the colour selection included orange and mustard. The company also described colours intended to combine with other Uniqlo clothing. The proposed wardrobe could therefore extend beyond matching pieces from the collaboration.

Length is a particularly concrete form of variation: it changes where a garment finishes and how its outline relates to the rest of an outfit. In this collection, offering alternatives was part of the product design itself. The release specifies selected items, so the change should not be read as two lengths for the entire range. Uniqlo, spring/summer 2018 announcement, 30 January 2018.

The autumn/winter 2018 collection used the theme of transition. Tajima described thinking about the intervals between day and night, light and shade, and one season and the next. The idea gave the work a temporal setting: clothes intended to accompany a changing day.

Uniqlo’s account identified green within a palette drawn from nature. New outerwear included a belted long coat in structured cotton and a double-face jacket with piping. These details offered distinct kinds of definition: the coat’s fabric and belt shaped its outline, while the jacket’s edging made a feature of its borders.

A large square stole carried botanical motifs drawn by Tajima. Its illustrated surface introduced another scale of detail beside the outerwear. An outfit could contain an assertive shape and a quieter drawing without requiring either to dominate every piece. The collection’s character emerged through the relationship between those elements as well as its seasonal theme. Uniqlo, autumn/winter 2018 announcement, 17 July 2018.

In Vogue’s spring 2019 interview, Tajima’s loose silhouettes were connected with the clothes she enjoyed wearing privately at home. The collection translated that ease into public dress through pieces including wide-leg jeans and a loose red maxi dress. The starting point was a familiar way of inhabiting clothing, developed into garments that could take part in a different setting. Vogue, interview with Hana Tajima, March 2019.

Maria Bobila’s April 2019 Fashionista interview described a particular source of imagery. Tajima had moved from Brooklyn to Kingston, beside the Hudson River in upstate New York. More time around nature and a slower pace formed part of the setting for the spring collection.

Her own botanical illustrations appeared on square satin stoles. The article connected them with the feeling of stillness she wanted the work to evoke. A print could carry that intention on a relatively small piece of cloth, allowing drawing to become part of the clothes people wore.

The detail also makes authorship visible. A botanical motif can be described merely as a floral print, but here the account identifies who drew it and the environment surrounding its development. The scarf becomes a meeting point between an image made in the studio and a garment that someone can arrange around herself. That connection is central to understanding this part of the collaboration. Fashionista, “How I Shop: Hana Tajima”, April 2019.

For autumn/winter 2019, the collection looked beneath the surface of the landscape. The collection’s Underground theme drew on mineral colours: sandy beige and brown, with deeper blue and green described through the appearance of gemstones.

A silk-blend series introduced a dress, blouse and trousers, with the separates able to form a coordinated outfit. The announcement also identified back shirring. Surface, shape and colour therefore supplied different sources of interest within the seasonal design.

Tajima’s accompanying statement described clothing as something altered by wearing. It acquires folds and creases, and its appearance changes around a moving body. She said she tried on her own designs as part of the development process. That account makes the finished image only one moment in the garment’s life: her creative attention extended to what would happen after someone put it on. Her description places making and wearing close together, with a sample providing feedback as well as a finished shape. Uniqlo, autumn/winter 2019 announcement, July 2019.

Clothes for changing bodies and lives

Tajima placed changing bodies at the centre of her spring/summer 2020 Hypebae interview. She wanted the clothes to accommodate differences in how a person’s body and mood felt from day to day. Her proposed answer combined loose, architectural shapes with softness and a deliberate sense of proportion.

The report identified wide-ankle trousers, an A-line maxi dress and a pleated crêpe blouse. Lime green, saturated orange and canary yellow gave the range a strong palette. Against those colours, Tajima set floral drawings inspired by the delicacy of spring flowers.

She described enjoying the tension between fragile-looking botanical motifs and much more exuberant colour. That contrast gave the collection a particular mood, bringing delicate imagery into contact with a much bolder palette. The interview also leaves room for different responses. Tajima described designing towards a feeling rather than imagining one fixed person who would wear every piece in the same way. Hypebae, interview with Hana Tajima, 16 April 2020.

A Who What Wear feature later in 2020 showed Tajima discussing clothes she was wearing herself. One arrangement paired a rayon shirt dress with a high-neck top. Another brought together a cotton dobby shirt and seersucker trousers; she singled out the cotton’s texture. A coat appeared with straight trousers and a printed rayon blouse.

These examples reveal several kinds of connection within the collection. Layering could place one neckline beside another, matching colour could bring different fabrics together, and a printed blouse could sit within a more structured outfit. The named combinations show how she interpreted her own designs when dressing.

Tajima also described finding inspiration in another person’s intriguing sense of style. Trying to understand what made it interesting could prompt her to make something. In this account, observing clothes on people and wearing the designs herself remained connected to the creative work. Who What Wear, interview with Hana Tajima, 2020.

The spring/summer 2021 interviews published by Her World and Beige addressed lives increasingly spent within the same rooms. Tajima discussed work, exercise and social contact sharing a domestic setting, and the difficulty of moving mentally between those activities. Clothing could help her mark a change of role during the day.

A ramie blouse gave the discussion a concrete design example. In Beige, which identified its article as advertising with Uniqlo, she said she had developed the blouse over several seasons before finding the material that suited it. She valued the light, translucent structure and the way its seams remained visible.

Her World also recorded her preference for linen-rayon trousers with a slightly androgynous shape. These were personal accounts of wearing and developing the collection. The blouse’s material and the trousers’ outline supplied different ways to express the mood she wanted, within clothes intended to accompany more than one part of her day. Her World and Beige, spring 2021 interviews.

Another 2021 conversation, with The Singapore Women’s Weekly, revealed the private references within the collection’s prints. Tajima said she painted and drew designs each season. An early print had used an element from her father’s ceramics; a more recent one drew on the lining of her grandmother’s kimono. These references were personal connections carried into the collaboration, even when their meaning was not obvious to an observer.

The interview also described the spring collection through rayon-linen pieces, seersucker ankle trousers and flared summer dresses. Soft geometric patterns appeared alongside these garment forms. Print and fabric construction each contributed to the work’s identity.

The family references make a useful distinction between inspiration and a replica. Tajima described taking an element of an object into a new design. A ceramic surface or a garment’s lining could become a starting point for another piece of cloth, with its own purpose and wearer. The Singapore Women’s Weekly, interview with Hana Tajima, April 2021.

For autumn/winter 2021, Tajima described clothing as an environment surrounding the body. The official collection pages connected that idea with specific construction: wide straight trousers had bias panels at both sides of the waist, intended to allow easier movement.

A long shirt dress used an adjustable tie at the back and could be worn open as a jacket. A relaxed shirt had loop-button closures, while a rayon georgette shirt combined dropped shoulders with a band collar. A cocoon-shaped twill coat offered another outline within the same range.

The palette drew on mineral tones, and prints referred to traditional weaving and sculptural art. These choices gave the bodily idea a visible expression through shape, pattern and surface. The adjustable tie and the trouser panels also located it in small construction decisions. The collection’s account moved between the atmosphere of an outfit and the details intended to make it easier to inhabit. Uniqlo, autumn/winter 2021 collection pages and designer message.

Dresses as a complete look

In May 2022, Tajima spoke to The Philippine Star’s YStyle about the appeal of a dress as a whole look contained in one garment. Her spring/summer collection approached that idea through several different constructions.

A long jersey camisole dress used seams that curved around the body to give the design shape and movement. Tajima also discussed the cotton dobby short-sleeved belted dress, which she liked wearing open as a jacket or over trousers as a tunic. The same named garment could therefore participate in more than one arrangement.

She connected the season’s bolder colours and patterns with wanting to recover a sense of joy after an earlier period of making clothes focused more inwardly on the wearer. The change was expressed through her own creative priorities. A curved seam, an open front and an energetic print offered different ways for the collection to take that direction. The Philippine Star, YStyle interview, 27 May 2022.

The autumn/winter 2022 announcement presented a collection of dresses. Uniqlo organised the collection around three material families: draping rayon-lyocell, satin and flannel. Cutting and delicate tucks were among the details identified in the presentation.

Those choices offered different surfaces through which to develop the season’s idea of grace. A dress could communicate through the arrangement of its cloth and the treatment of its shape, with the material doing part of the visual work. The proposal was more specific than a single outline repeated without variation.

In her accompanying statement, Tajima began with how someone wanted to feel when dressing. She described each dress as a complete look that could express a part of a person’s life or personality. The statement placed the wearer’s desired mood alongside the garment’s construction. It gives the collection a clear creative intention while preserving the possibility that different people would be drawn to different dresses. Uniqlo, autumn/winter 2022 announcement, 2 August 2022.

From museum display to personal response

The collaboration also appeared in a museum’s examination of clothing. MoMA’s installation caption for Items: Is Fashion Modern? identifies a 2017 hijab by Hana Tajima and Uniqlo, donated by the manufacturer. It lists rayon, polyester, spandex, cotton and cupro among its materials.

Uniqlo’s September 2017 announcement identified the pieces selected for the exhibition as a printed AIRism stole and an inner hijab. The presentation therefore involved both a visible scarf and an underlying component of the head covering. The exhibition ran from 1 October 2017 to 28 January 2018.

Tajima’s accompanying statement placed the wearer’s feelings and relationship with her body at the centre of her thinking. In the museum, the clothes could be considered as designed objects with materials, makers and cultural meanings. Naming the actual garments keeps that encounter concrete: it was a particular example of the collaboration entering an exhibition, where its construction and place in dress could become subjects for discussion. MoMA, installation caption; Uniqlo, exhibition announcement, September 2017.

At Waseda University in 2021, student staff leader N.M. brought the collaboration into a more participatory setting. The organiser’s account described an online talk with Tajima on 1 July, alongside a display of spring 2021 clothes in the Intercultural Communication Center lounge from 10 June to 8 July.

N.M. explained the personal motivation behind the event. After arriving in Japan, the organiser had felt self-conscious as a Muslim who wore hijab. Encountering the collaboration had helped N.M. feel more accepting of that identity. At the talk, Tajima’s presentation was followed by questions and an optional chat session. N.M. recalled students participating through the chat and sending messages of thanks.

The display also invited visitors to write on heart-shaped paper and attach their contributions to one of the designs. Messages, wishes and scribbles became part of the installation. The invitation allowed people to encounter the clothes and answer with words of their own, adding individual responses to the way the collection was presented. Waseda ICC, organiser’s event report, 30 July 2021.