Uniqlo might seem like a strange name, unless you know that the Japanese casual clothing chain’s monicker is meant as a mash-up of the words “unique clothing.” Except, even if you know that, it’s still kind of a strange name. If you’re combining “unique” and “clothing,” why take four letters from the first word and only two from the second? Doesn’t lopping off the C from “clothing” actually make Uniqlo a combination of “unique” and the non-existent “lothing?” Here’s the thing, though: once upon a time, Uniqlo did call itself “Uniclo,” and it only got that Q because someone screwed up some paperwork, as alluded to in this Instagram post from the Uniqlo official account, which also shows off some cool retro logos the brand used to use and reminds us that prior to 2006, the Uniqlo logo was a darker shade of red than the bright hue it uses now.
When the first Uniqlo branch opened all the way back in 1984, its logo was a red triangle with a pair of illustrated people holding hands above the English words “Unique Clothing Warehouse,” since initially they also sold fashion items from other manufacturers. “Unique Clothing Warehouse” is a bit of a mouthful when pronounced by Japanese speakers, though (it becomes something like “yuniku kurojingu ueahausu”), so they decided to combine the first two words and drop the third for their official Japanese name. As seen in the video, their signage also had the katakana ユニ・クロ, with a .