Marketing & Communications

Uniqlo Expands Campaign to Use Power of Clothing to Bring ‘Peace for All’

The brand has partnered with renowned photographers from Magnum Photos to bring the stories and impacts of its Peace for All campaign to exhibitions in 10 cities.

Sponsored Content | / This article is sponsored by SUSCOM | By SUSCOM | Published 1 week ago | About a 5 minute read

Image: Images from the Global Photo Exhibition – Peace for All in Hiroshima | SUSCOM

Japanese casual clothing brand Uniqlo, operated by Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., has expanded its Peace for All charity T-shirt project, launched in 2022, in a powerful way. In September and October 2024, the label partnered with renowned international photographic cooperative Magnum Photos to hold photography exhibitions in 10 cities around the world. In Japan, the exhibitions took place in Tokyo and Hiroshima, a city that epitomizes the desire for global peace.

A T-shirt with the power to spread peace

With its motto of “It’s time for action, in the name of world peace,” the Peace for All project asks well-known figures who share this vision to voluntarily provide their own personal peace message, which is then designed onto a T-shirt and sold for charity. Fast Retailing donates all the profits from the T-shirt sales (approximately 20 percent of the retail price) to three humanitarian organizations — the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Save the Children and Plan International — to help support their activities (5,240,022 T-shirts have been sold and ¥1,668,037,500 donated through August 2024).

In Fall 2024, a new project called the Global Photo Exhibition – Peace for All was launched by Uniqlo’s Peace for All team together with Magnum Photos so that people could see for themselves the difference they were making, and the kinds of people their action was benefiting around the world through simply buying and wearing a T-shirt. Three renowned Magnum photographers visited several locations around the world to depict the innate strength of people living in difficult circumstances and capture moments of Peace for All-funded activities from their own perspective. Those images have been turned into T-shirt designs to generate fresh donations, and also compiled into the first ever Uniqlo global photo exhibition.

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We caught up with Eiko Sherba, Uniqlo’s Director of Global Marketing, at the Hiroshima photo exhibition.

Leveraging the combined power of clothing and images

“We felt we hadn’t fully illustrated how financial donations raised through Peace for All were actually being handled by people on the ground, and how things were progressing overall,” Sherba explained. “So, we enlisted the help of Magnum Photos — which documents local scenes through iconic images and authentic storytelling — and created a photo exhibition that conveys our underlying approach and the actual physical support activities themselves.”

The exhibition showcases 63 photos from three Magnum photographers: Cristina de Middel, Olivia Arthur and Lindokuhle Sobekwa.

“Rather than simply document the humanitarian aid site, these vivid photos taken by Cristina, Magnum Photos president, in Vietnam depict the children’s rich expressions,” Sherba said. “Olivia, the previous Magnum Photos president, photographed children in Romania who had fled from Ukraine. Her impressive photos shot in a custom-made studio skillfully highlight the children’s imagination and the gentle attention of the therapy dog offering mental health solace.

“Lindokuhle took photos of the refugee camp in Ethiopia. His photos don’t simply evoke a sense of sadness about the daily lives of refugees, but instead express the inherent strength of the people living there in terms of their determination to maintain precious family ties and their will to survive and thrive even in difficult circumstances. They are messages of hope, dreams, and resilience.”

Apparently, this first exhibition was the result of a chance encounter with De Middel.

“When Cristina participated in the Peace for All project in 2023, she mentioned how wonderful she thought the project was and how Magnum often took photos in the places that need humanitarian aid,” Sherba explained. “She suggested getting professional Magnum photographers to visit different frontline sites to create a unique record of those activities. The end result was this great exhibition, which has enabled us to combine our power of clothing and Magnum’s power of pictures to convey our common desire to change the world.”

'Our responsibility as a global company'

According to UNHCR, forced displacement continues to rise — with over 120 million persons around the world having been forced to flee their homes due to conflict, persecution, war and oppression. Uniqlo began providing support for refugees in collaboration with UNHCR in 2006 and signed an official global partnership with the organization in 2011.

“In the early days, we offered clothing aid; but as the number of refugees worldwide surpassed 100 million, we asked ourselves if there was anything more that Uniqlo — with its unique skillset — could offer,” Sherba said. “The Peace for All project was one idea about which our company president, Tadashi Yanai, was passionate. He was determined to donate all the profits from the T-shirt sales, which is a considerable commitment for a private company. I think our earnest commitment has been effectively conveyed to our collaborative partners and customers.”

We asked Sherba about the thinking behind the Peace for All project motto: “It’s time for action, in the name of world peace.”

“In a sense, this is our responsibility as a global company,” Sherba emphasized. “Clothes are an indispensable daily commodity, and our company can only operate effectively in a safe and peaceful society. We have to take positive action as a company to help create and maintain such a society — and to conduct business that, in turn, benefits society at large. It is vital that we continue to do everything we can to encourage peace. That has always been our view, and I don’t think it will ever change.”

Some issues cannot be solved by one company, but there are always things that a single company can do. Uniqlo believes it can leverage clothing to help make the world a better place and is determined to keep evolving its activities to achieve that aim into the future.