JAPAN'S BEST-DESIGNED OFFICES
Concept
Play fashion!
The company slogan is Play fashion! — enjoy not only clothes but life itself as fashion. To pass that on to customers, the staff have to feel it first, and that is where the office starts.
The signature is the planting. Asked for “a space overflowing with green”, the designers laid out many kinds of plant as if planning a landscape, giving a 27th floor the openness and energy of ground level. Because the head office was formed by merging companies, it was designed as a place where people from each of them could share one culture.
01 · Reception
Dark tones, and green
The entrance is calm and dark-toned, with generous sofas that work for visitors and for larger discussions. Plants are placed here too.
02 · Workspace
Desks, or the café, as you like
About 1,300 people work at the head office. Everyone has a desk, but taking a laptop to the café is normal, so people pick where they work. The corridor to the work floor carries illustrations of the company’s history since it was founded in 1953.
03 · A CAFE
Lunch, all-hands, yoga and a fashion show
A CAFE started as a place where people from the separate sites could meet, and it now serves as canteen, meeting place and venue. It holds the monthly all-hands meeting, store-manager gatherings, yoga events open to the public, language study groups, meetings, TV shoots and press conferences — and it has a runway, so a show with models can be held here. The furniture moves, and the chairs and tables are deliberately not matched: some were brought from the merged companies, and the mismatch suits a multi-brand company.
04 · Share books
A shelf the staff curate
One wall is a bookshelf run on a share books system: staff bring in books to share, book-loving colleagues look after it, and a “library committee” re-curates the shelf every two months, so the spines alone are worth a look.
05 · How they work
Longer short hours, and plain words
About 80% of staff are women, and short-hour working can be taken for a longer period than usual; the return rate after parental leave is 93%, and men take leave too. Official wording is being changed so that support for childcare is written as childcare support rather than support for women. The company joins the rainbow parade and supports the coming-out photo project OUT IN JAPAN.
