From UniQlo in Shanghai (Creative Award 2007)

My parents just came back from China. This was my belly, and a t-shirt from the UniQlo Creative Award 2007 (intense Flash alert) collection. All that I can say is that for the equivalent of $15-20 in Canadian dollars worth of t-shirt, it'd be my ruin if I were to live in Asia. But then, I don't, so I am safe.

Among those listed, my mother picked (indeed) Kiyotake Ogawa's "pattern". I thought that the World one (with Antarctica on the back), the Lazio Street and the Pigeons and Man are probably the other best ones.

(My love affair with UniQlo in fact started with a branch way outside of Tokyo, in a town called Ichinoseki, along the northern Shinkansen line. I was visiting my friend Uri, who was out there in the Iwate prefecture, teaching English in a small sleepy fishing town. UniQlo is best described as Gap's Japanese counterpart, at Old Navy's prices, with a certain emphasis on design - at least for North American eyes and fingers, it comes across as being close to the tip of trendy, deserving praise for encouraging volk-creativity with its various t-shirt design contests. UniQlo opened in the USA just a year or two ago, with its flagship store in SoHo, NYC. It shouldn't take long before Toronto gets one, and perhaps even Montreal.)