Nicole Club

Nicole Club was announced by NICOLE in November 1981 as a youth-oriented label during the height of Japan’s designer-and-character brand market. Its early remit intersected with the company’s overseas expansion, but the surviving evidence does not establish a single gender definition or named designer for every early season. The present brand is womenswear, and that current scope should not be projected backwards across the entire history.

The Club name separated into a distinct men’s brand, Nicole Club for Men, in 1984. Nicole Club itself remained within the women’s side of the company and was transformed into 179/WG in August 2001, adopting a casual vintage-Americana identity built around workwear references, cropped tops, corduroy and practical separates. This was a long-lived phase of the same lineage, not a second foundation.

In September 2023, NICOLE retired the 179/WG name and relaunched Nicole Club. The active collection now frames traditional and vintage-inflected clothing through contemporary womenswear, with no individual creative director named on the official brand page.

Nicole Club has repeatedly translated the wider house’s design discipline into clothes for a younger and more casual audience. Its early identity used accessible designer clothing as a point of entry to NICOLE, while the later 179/WG phase foregrounded American workwear, colour blocking, embroidery, corduroy and practical layering.

The 2023 return to the Nicole Club name brought a cleaner traditional base. Current pieces use familiar shirts, knitwear, jackets and dresses as durable wardrobe components, adjusting proportion and feminine detail without depending on seasonal spectacle. Vintage is treated as a construction and styling reference, with longevity stated through clothes intended to be worn again rather than archived untouched.