Pantone: Gap vs. Uniqlo

January 14th, 2009 @ 10:55am

The New York Times‘ art/fashion blog The Moment has a post up right now about The Gap’s new “Pantone T-Shop.” In short, The Gap is currently offering a limited-edition set of T-shirts based on certain colors in the Pantone spectrum within a special pop-up store.

Hmm. I wonder where that idea came from.

Over a year ago, a Japanese retailer by the name of UNIQLO — perhaps you have heard of them — also did a series of limited-edition T-shirts and cashmere sweaters based on Pantone colors. But I am sure The Gap came to the whole Pantone idea through a completely independent thought process.

Anyway, props go to Uniqlo for being the first mass retailer on the Pantone train. One more example of Japanese fashion prescience.

by W. David Marx | Posted in Japan and The World

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Comments

  1. ThursdayJanuary 15, 2009
    01:14am
    posted by JNH

    Its pretty rough to accuse The Gap of plagiarising this idea when there have been Pantone wallets and bags available since the early part of this decade, Pantone dinnerware for at least a year, and graphic designers have been mimicing the design of the iconic PMS chip for years.
    American Apparel have aimed to match their t colors to Pantones since the start, did Uniqlo rip them off?Its pretty rough to accuse The Gap of plagiarising this idea when there have been Pantone wallets and bags available since the early part of this decade, Pantone dinnerware for at least a year, and graphic designers have been mimicing the design of the iconic PMS chip for years.
    American Apparel have aimed to match their t colors to Pantones since the start, did Uniqlo rip them off?

  2. January 15, 2009
    11:18am
    posted by W. David Marx

    Uniqlo had a huge well-publicized campaign where they made Pantone-colored T-shirts. Then the Gap had a huge well-publicized campaign where they made Pantone-colored T-shirts.

    Just using Pantone — the industry standard for colors — is clearly not grounds for plagiarism (and we aren’t quite using the word “plagiarism” anyway), but making a big deal of Pantone-T-shirts does open the company up for comparison to a certain Japanese rival who did it a year earlier.

    If Gucci suddenly did a collaboration with Comme des Garçons, you could claim that CdG collaborates with everyone. But c’mon, the comparison to what Louis Vuitton just did would be hard to avoid.


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