Uniqlo isn’t the first brand you’d think of when it comes to inspiring ads. But the Japanese casualwear giant has just unveiled its very first global campaign for Lifewear and has stepped up a notch in the process.

It’s designed to build brand awareness globally but especially in the all-important US market where it’s still (relatively) small and less well-known than other domestic and European chains.

The campaign asks the question Why do we get dressed?, to which the easy answer might be “so we don’t have to walk down the street naked”. But let’s not be too sarcastic.

Essentially, Uniqlo is encouraging people to consider their attitudes towards clothing. It’s also making the most of the vision of parent company Fast Retailing’s president of global creative John Jay. He told Campaign: “We design simple, beautiful, high-quality everyday clothes that become the building blocks of your daily life,” and added that the ads were “designed to highlight [Uniqlo’s] commitment to quality, functionality and style”.

The film and images were shot in various Japanese cities by NY-based ad agency Droga5. Interestingly, given that this is a Japanese brand, the main protagonists/models aren’t Japanese.

Yes, European/American models are often features of Japanese advertising and yes it may seem logical to use such models in the campaign given its global reach. But it would have been interesting to have seen Japanese models, or at least a mixture of ethnicities, used here because part of Uniqlo’s appeal is in its oh-so-Japanese design ethos and approach to functionality.