Uniqlo Cate Blanchett literary magazine puts women first

Uniqlo and actor Cate Blanchett are launching the Uniqlo Cate Blanchett literary magazine, called Stories She Tells, a project built around essays on women's experiences and perspectives. The magazine is the retailer's first literary magazine, and Blanchett, who serves as a global brand ambassador for Uniqlo, will chair the selection committee that chooses the essays. According to reports on the announcement, the project grew out of conversations between Blanchett and executives at Uniqlo's parent company about forms of expression that reach beyond film and fashion. It gives the brand a publishing venture with a clear editorial purpose, rather than a catalogue dressed up as a magazine.

The inaugural issue of the Uniqlo Cate Blanchett literary magazine will carry the theme Connection, and it is scheduled to appear in autumn 2027. Essays will be chosen through an open call, which means writers outside established literary circles can submit work for consideration. Selected contributors will receive support for their writing activities and opportunities for mentorship, according to Uniqlo. The magazine will also include academic research papers and literary works connected to the theme, so the essays will sit alongside scholarship and fiction instead of standing alone as celebrity-led content.

A Tokyo launch with students in the room

The project is launching through a partnership with the University of Tokyo, with plans to expand globally through partnerships with universities in other countries over time. At a press conference at the university, Blanchett appeared on stage with two students, Kaori Hayashi, an executive vice president and professor at the university, and writer and poet Mieko Kawakami. Blanchett read passages from Kawakami's novel Breasts and Eggs and from Belonging by Clarice Lispector, two writers she named as favourites. The staging mattered: the announcement put students and academics in the same frame as the ambassador, which fits the project's stated aim of building the magazine with universities rather than simply borrowing their names.

Blanchett told WWD that the idea came from conversations with Koji Yanai, a group senior executive officer at Fast Retailing, Uniqlo's parent company, that began roughly a year earlier. The two talked about shared passions, including film and literature, and about art forms that a broader community does not always get access to. Blanchett pointed to a gap she sees in mainstream storytelling: women make up over half of the world's population, yet their stories are often kept out of the mainstream. The magazine, in her account, is a way to use Uniqlo's global reach to give female literary expression more room and more confidence.

A brand that already publishes

Blanchett became a Uniqlo global brand ambassador in August 2025, and the Uniqlo Cate Blanchett literary magazine is the latest project to come out of that relationship. Uniqlo already edits its own magazine, LifeWear, a free periodical devoted to the company's philosophy of making everyday life better and more comfortable. That history helps explain why a clothing retailer is moving into literary publishing: the company has an existing editorial operation, a store network that can distribute print, and an ambassador whose public life has long mixed acting with humanitarian work. The new magazine extends that publishing habit into a different kind of writing.

Eiko Sherba, Uniqlo's sustainability marketing director, said the university partnership was chosen deliberately. The project is partly about women's voices, she said, and it also aims to draw on the energy of young people. Building the programme with a university, she added, gives it a solid academic grounding in women's empowerment and gender issues, rather than leaving it as a corporate statement. That framing also sets a test for the magazine itself: readers will be able to judge it by the essays it publishes, the writers it supports, and whether the promised global university partnerships actually materialise.

What to watch as the open call takes shape

For now, the concrete details are the theme, the open call, the mentorship support for selected contributors, and the plan to pair essays with academic papers and literary works. Uniqlo has not yet published the full submission rules in the reports on the launch, so writers watching the Uniqlo Cate Blanchett literary magazine will be looking for deadlines, eligibility, and how the selection committee weighs new voices against established ones. The autumn date gives the project a long runway, and that runway cuts both ways: it allows time to build a genuine editorial process, and it leaves plenty of room for scepticism if the first issue arrives thin. Either way, the first test will be the table of contents, and whether the voices in it match the ambition in the announcement.

Sources: Fashionista reported the launch and the London Tribune covered the Tokyo press conference, citing WWD and a Uniqlo release.