While visiting Manchester, I had a little time to go shopping, and my girlfriend dragged me to Muji, the UK outlet of the wonderful Mujirushi Ryohin — the name translates roughly as “no brand, good product”. While not that big in the UK (16 stores), they’re quite a phenomenon in Asia and their design sensibility packs the same kind of fanaticism-inducing memetic punch as Apple on a good day — clean, simple, often made out of recycled materials, heavy use of aluminium and blobject-like lines. Muji’s product line includes stationery, household goods, clothes and recently a hybrid car and a house — about 5000 products in total — and is beautifully functional and relatively inexpensive. I rather like them: unless there’s something truly evil hiding beneath that soothing combination of Ikea-with-a-design-standard, ecological awareness and Zen calm, they may be the model of a sustainable megazaibatsu. (They also apparently feature in the recent William Gibson novel, Pattern Recognition.)
So, what did I buy? An aluminium fountain pen and a pair of cargo pants.