More UNIQLO News: Alice Roi On Her Way, and a T-shirt Bonanza

You should know by now that The Shophound lives and dies for UNIQLO these days. We were expecting the next phase of their Designer Invitation collections to have arrived today featuring Alexandre Plokhov for Cloak and Alice Roi, but those deliveries have been pushed back until next Friday the 27th. Unfortunately, the Cloak collection will be coming later, but not cancelled as had been reported earlier as the promising Mr. Plokhov has had to close his business. The men's component will be represented by Satoru Tanaka, (preview sketches after the jump) which we thought was coming next month. Such a lot of designers to keep track of! Still to come, a collection from 3.1 Phillip Lim that is sure to draw crowds.
As if that's not enough, they are spinning their limited edition T-shirts off into a new store concept. Next week the brand will unveil its first UT Store in Tokyo's Harajuku district featuring vending machines dispensing tees packaged in plastic tubes for a total self service experience.
To promote it, they have commissioned photographer Terry Richardson (possibly NSFW) to create an ad campaign using real people found through MySpace wearing their favorite UNIQLO tee. This would seem like a great idea, unless you are familiar with Richardson's sexually charged work, in which case the idea of him trolling MySpace is kind of creepy and gross.
Why would we care about that here in New York? We will be getting the 100 or so new styles next weekend from artists and designers including, among many others, Richardson, Nobuyoshi Araki, Kim Jones, Peter Saville, Gareth Pugh and Sølve Sundsbø, and possibly a vending machine or two of our own. At $15.50 each, they are still the best buy in town.
So next Friday will be another big day at UNIQLO, and the line starts behind us.
After the jump, preview sketches from Alice Roi &  Satoru Tanaka

Uniqlo T-Shirt Project (High Snobiety)
UNIQLO UT (Official Site)

Alice Roi, Satoru Tanaka for UNIQLO's Designer Invitation Project (click for a larger view)