Along with cheaper groceries and better job opportunities, never underestimate the allure of cross-body bags and free alterations, writes Alex Casey.

Last December I was wedged into a pair of cream barrel pants when the fire alarm went off at the Uniqlo store in Sydney’s CBD. As locals calmly abandoned their belongings and dutifully filed through the emergency exits, I was busy executing a dangerously slow shimmy in the dressing room to vacate said pants without disturbing the pins around the hem. As a New Zealander with a flight home to catch, this was my one chance to cash in on Uniqlo’s free alteration service, and I wasn’t about to throw the opportunity away for something as insignificant as my own life. 

Such is the power of the beloved Japanese clothing giant, a brand which markets itself on high quality, functional staples at affordable prices. While famous around the world for such viral products as the capacious cross-body sling bag, cosy lightweight puffer jackets and perfectly boxy cotton T-shirts, Uniqlo’s defining characteristic in New Zealand is that we can’t get our grubby mitts on bloody any of it. With no stores in Aotearoa and no international shipping options, Uniqlo items to New Zealanders in 2026 remain as coveted as cloves to Europeans in The Middle Ages. 

I thought about Uniqlo while reading the latest wave of New Zealand brain drain coverage, spurred by the revelation that Jacinda Ardern herself has recently relocated to Sydney. Around 120,000 New Zealanders left our shores last year and more than half of them have chosen Australia as their new home. With young departees citing such motivations as better wages, cheaper groceries and a wider range of job opportunities in Australia, one has to wonder if Uniqlo’s promise of free hemming and veritable ROYGBIV of sling bags might also be sweetening the deal.

Comedian Johanna Cosgrove, who recently penned her own impassioned diatribe about why she moved to Australia, tells The Spinoff that Uniqlo was a “huge factor” in her fleeing – right behind “cost of living”, “abhorrent right-leaning government”, “lack of thriving community/third spaces” and “lack of arts funding”. Within 24 hours of arriving in Melbourne she ventured to Uniqlo, only to be left “shaken and horrified” to find it closed for renovations. Two months later, she was rewarded with “socks and flared movement pants beyond my wildest dreams.” 

Rhiannon McCall, another New Zealand comedian who recently jumped the ditch, also admits “it’s not just the groceries, the lifestyle, the work opportunities… it’s also the Uniqlo that’s brought me to Melbourne.” In another damning blow for New Zealand’s arts infrastructure, she reveals that Uniqlo is also nurturing her comedy career (Nosferatu costume) in providing crucial resources (black turtleneck) at an accessible price. “I don’t know why we don’t get these beautiful, stunning Japanese department stores with truly well made cheap basics,” she says. 

Hundreds of New Zealanders who aren’t even comedians have wondered the exact same thing on social media. Just last year, a Reddit post asking “why hasn’t Uniqlo entered the New Zealand market?” received 832 upvotes and 282 comments. “Keeping it realistic but I would love an eight floor flagship store in Rolleston,” wrote one sorrowful Cantabrian. “I visit every time I go to Oz,” said another mourner. Elsewhere on Facebook, many more lamented the same problem. “If you have a friend in Australia you could ask them to ship Uniqlo clothing to you in NZ,” suggested one. 

More painful still is that the Japanese clothing giant teased that it might be heading to our shores way back in 2017. “We are still looking forward [to] the opportunity that we might have, or we will open, a store in New Zealand in the future,” the company breadcrumbed us at the time. Nearly 10 years on, what I would say to you is that we’ve been played. “At this stage we do not have any upcoming store openings in New Zealand,” advised a representative from Uniqlo Australia, presumably while smugly chugging down a 2L bottle of milk that cost them 0.5c and a cheeky wink. 

But wait, there’s more ownage. “At this stage we only ship to delivery addresses within Australia,” they added gently, working hard to earn that 25% more cash per hour. “Although there will not be any changes in the near future [ouch], be sure to keep an eye out on our site in case anything changes.”

While New Zealand struggles to make housing more affordable, increase job opportunities, bring down grocery prices and generally find a single reason that people should stay here, this is yet another blow. Yes, capitalism is evil and we can’t consume our way to happiness, but imagine what it would do for our national mojo-meter, even for a moment, to have a grand Uniqlo opening with anthropomorphised sling bags doing “the dougie” and rapturous New Zealanders piling up on Heat Tech thermals for the long winter ahead (mine got me through a decade of damp, uninsulated flats). 

If only we had a prime minister whose main thing was opening really big international megastores, eh?