Goodbye Skinny Jeans, Goodbye Cheap Down Jackets — Why Uniqlo Removed Two Iconic Staples in 2025
Is Uniqlo now the only source of fashion trends?In 2025, two items quietly—but completely—disappeared from Uniqlo’s product lineup. They were the skinny pants that once defined an era, and the sub-¥10,000 down jacket that had long been a winter staple.
Why were these deeply beloved items discontinued?
“There’s no such thing as something that doesn’t exist at Uniqlo.”
So goes the saying about this absolute giant of the industry. Here, we unpack the meaning behind the decision made by such a dominant player, alongside the harsh realities of the fashion industry.
The Mild Yankee Uniform Finally Disappears The Surprising Reason Skinny Pants Vanished from Uniqlo
Today, with trends becoming increasingly dispersed and diversified, it’s common for once-popular items to coexist rather than disappear. However, in 2025, skinny pants finally vanished from Uniqlo’s lineup. This marks the complete exit of skinny pants from the realm of must-have trends. Similarly, they have also disappeared from GU stores.
Since the late 2010s, fashion media often declared that skinny is dead, but in reality, while the number of wearers and buyers gradually declined, a certain base continued to exist over a long period. Naturally, they were still stocked at Uniqlo and GU.
This doesn’t indicate a concentration of popularity but rather the persistence of a dedicated customer base. Notably, young men working as promoters in busy shopping districts and those known as mild Yankees continued to favor skinny pants even after 2015. In the late 2010s, skinny pants had, in some ways, become the uniform of these rebellious young men.
However, as the 2020s progressed, even they began shifting toward wide-leg and tapered pants. Finally, in 2025, skinny pants ceased to serve their role as the uniform of the bad boys.
Of course, demand for slim-fitting pants still exists, so they have now been replaced by slim-straight pants, which are narrower than regular straight pants but wider than skinny pants. That it took nearly a decade for skinny pants to disappear from Uniqlo’s shelves highlights both the slow pace of must-have trend shifts and the increasing diversification of fashion.
If It’s Not at Uniqlo, It Doesn’t Exist in Japan — The Absolute Standard Facing the Apparel Industry
Why has whether an item exists at Uniqlo become so important?
Since the fleece boom of the late 1990s, it’s no exaggeration to say that Uniqlo has become the baseline for virtually every standard in clothing. Price, quality, design, trend awareness — not only industry insiders but even consumers have come to evaluate and discuss apparel based on Uniqlo. There’s even an anecdote from the 2000s where department store brands approached fabric factories asking, “We want the same material as Uniqlo.”
Uniqlo has thus become the new standard for clothing today. Naturally, it sets the standard for product design and trend items, and as the brand selling the most clothes in Japan, it serves as the absolute indicator of must-have trends.
Fashion always has trends that evolve over time. Although people often say changes are rapid in recent years, the evolution of must-have trends since 2015 has actually been more gradual. Skinny pants, which dominated from 2008 to 2015, did not disappear immediately even after wide-leg silhouettes made a comeback in 2015. While they were no longer a must-have trend, they continued to have a dedicated support base for some time.
However, their disappearance from Uniqlo and GU decisively marks that skinny pants are no longer part of the core must-have trends in Japan.
Can you no longer buy Uniqlo down jackets under ¥10,000? The painfully real reason behind the shift to synthetic padding
Another item gradually disappearing from the mass market is the down jacket under ¥10,000.
This is less about changing trends and more about the rising costs of raw materials and other expenses. To keep retail prices as close as possible to their traditional levels, it’s more practical to switch from expensive down (feathers) to affordable synthetic functional filling.
The once-iconic Uniqlo Ultra Light Down Jacket, stitched horizontally and widely popular, now costs ¥7,990. Meanwhile, the almost identical Pufftech Jacket, filled with synthetic insulation, is sold for ¥6,990, a full ¥1,000 cheaper.
From next year onward, Ultra Light Down Jackets of this type are expected to be discontinued and replaced entirely by the Pufftech Jacket. At GU, down jackets have already disappeared from store shelves since 2020. In the future, Uniqlo’s down jackets will be limited to higher-priced items over ¥10,000.
This trend isn’t limited to Uniqlo or GU — it’s happening across sports and casual apparel brands. Even major sportswear companies like Mizuno and Descente now primarily offer affordable winter outerwear with synthetic fill in the ¥10,000 range.
Unlike changes in design or silhouette trends, the future standard for affordable winter outerwear will be synthetic insulation.
The shift isn’t just about cost reduction. Down requires careful washing, while synthetic fill can be washed in a home machine. From the perspective of easy care, winter outerwear with synthetic insulation better meets the needs of the mass market.
Interview and text： Mitsuhiro Minami
Born in 1970. After graduating from college, he joined a chain of mass retail clothing stores and became a reporter for a textile trade newspaper in 1997. 2003: After retiring, he worked in public relations for a T-shirt apparel manufacturer, as a magazine editor, in sales for a large exhibition organizer, and in public relations for a fashion college. Currently, he works as a freelance textile industry writer and PR advisor.