With its illuminated bends and sci-fi smog, the expansive virtual reality universe of Steven Spielberg’s 2018 film Ready Player One is a lot like modern day Seoul. They both emanate an 1980s inkling of a far-flung future. Seoul’s skyline is dotted with animated HD screens, corporate hieroglyphics and hotly coloured church crosses that seem to float in mid air. Cars zoom across wide highways. The faces of models stroking their soft skin are projected onto the sides of tall buildings and cast reflections on the pavement slabs below. This might be what being trapped inside a giant, doe-eyed computer game would be like.

In the last decade, South Korea has lucratively wholesaled its pop and beauty regimes to the world. Now it is focused on showcasing its fully-flourished fashion scene where global trends are adopted fast and then ramped up a couple of notches. At Hera Seoul Fashion Week’s S/S 2019 shows, for example, staple sporty clothes collided with tailoring. At UL:KIN, smart jackets had ruched, sportswear sleeves. Shell suit pants were worn with dinner jackets at Beyond Closet and, at Ordinary People, Adidas activewear was sliced into trench coats. Duality is at the core of K-fashion, whether in the meeting of the masculine and the feminine, or the space between formality and playfulness. The past pushes the present.

The season opened with Solid Homme’s anniversary show. Launched by Madame Woo in 1988, the label has been instrumental in shaping attitudes towards menswear in Korea for the last three decades, and today sells through 28 stores locally and more than 20 stores around the world. ‘When I started out I was looking at what was happening internationally because nothing much was happening here. The fashion industry in Korea was almost non-existent,’ she says.

Today, under the direction of Jung Kuho, Hera Seoul Fashion Week is a brightly lit vitrine of design talent; its collections are shoulder to shoulder with New York, London, Milan and Paris. ‘The kind of support we are seeing with the Seoul Design Foundation didn’t exist when I started and there were no opportunities to be showcased in the context of a fashion week. Fashion just wasn’t a buzzword,’ Woo says.

Today there is a vast ecosystem of brands, leading retail concepts and talent in the city: ‘Now I can look at what’s going on at home and think about what is getting people excited and how they are interpreting trends. There’s more to engage with at a local level.’ Woo’s anniversary show was staged on the curved roof of the Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza – the home of the seasonal shows. The collection took inspiration from a culture caught in conflict; military details were the focus as large forward-facing pockets and canvas accessories alluded to re-appropriated clothes worn post-war. Knitwear was askew.

Hyun-min Han, the designer behind MÜNN, one of Seoul’s most exciting young menswear brands, was at the show. Han studied graphic design at SADI – a design institute founded by Samsung – before switching to fashion inspired by the work of Alexander McQueen. Soon after, he began a year long internship with Madame Woo at her more modish label Wooyoungmi. He started MÜNN in 2013. ‘She has opened the door for so many upcoming, young Korean menswear designers to be noticed by international people,’ he said. ‘I learned so much there.’

His S/S 2019 collection was the standout of the season. Influenced by the computer games he played as a child, it decoded the reality of living in a city like Seoul. The selvedge edge of tailoring was exposed and stitches of traditional tailoring techniques revealed; pin-stripe wool was cut into bomber jackets. Nike football t-shirts were repurposed and recycled.

Japanese Kuroki denim and traditional Korean jacquards were mixed with 3M Scotchlite reflective fabric. Showpieces were made from graphic Vietnamese gunny sacks. ‘I went back to when I was surrounded by Walkman’s, cassette tapes, Gameboys and Japanimation. That was the opposite of virtual reality. It was my actual reality,’ he says. Han was presented with the Best Designer Award at this year’s closing gala and will receive 200 million won from the Hyundai Home Shopping Network Corp to help grow his business.

Korean menswear re-frames the sartorial suiting of the 1980s economic boom and fuses it with the high-tech attitude of the new millennium. In comparison to its fashion week counterparts, the story of men’s fashion in Korea is relatively young. ‘Men didn’t really have a sense of style back when I started; it wasn’t something they thought of or valued,’ Woo says. ‘In the past, working to have food on the table was what drove people, so style didn’t come into it. You just wore your daily work uniform and didn’t think about it…’ The men of today are completely different. They belong to a generation that has more opportunities and has had more exposure to international attitudes.

‘Fashion is always changing and I have to adapt too,’ Woo said backstage, surrounded by models wearing her latest work. She isn’t handing over the baton to Han just yet. Even after 30 years, it’s still all go. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Seoul Fashion Week website

The city of Seoul gives good pep. A hi-tech megalopolis surrounded by rice paddies and fields, it has become a voguish playhouse for the world’s trend conscious – it is a place where popstars rule and perfection is deified. Last week, designers at Hera Seoul Fashion Week revolted against norms as queer club culture met military uniforms at Blindness. Youser spliced tracksuits and forceful streetwear; R Shemiste destroyed and disassembled archetypes of teenage closets.

Where do you go for quiet, understated clothes in one of the world’s most pulsating cities? Look to Low Classic, the laidback label launched in 2009 by Lee Myungshin, Hwang Hyng-ji and Park Jin-seon. They met whilst students at the costume department of Konkuk University during the early Noughties, a period when Korean designer brands like Wooyoungmi and JunnJ were making headway overseas as Seoul’s biggest fashion exports. Naturally the trio skipped exams to help out backstage at their shows.

‘When we first created Low Classic, there were a lot of wholesale and street brands, but not many designer labels…’ Myungshin says. ‘We saw a gap but there were hardly any distribution channels so I made ten styles and was determined to sell them online.’ The first people to buy were fashion savvy friends in their mid-20s, later celebrities bought pieces and wore them on TV and then the line was picked up by editors who were drawn to its louche, European élan. Today the label is sold across Asia and in two locations in the US.

Low Classic exudes a knowing confidence counter to the showy garb elsewhere on the official Fashion Week schedule. It has none of the K-pop kapow we expect from the city. ‘The K-pop stars are told what to wear –  they don’t get to dress how they want to,’ Myungshin says. ‘I guess they want to give fans colourful performances, they want to exude a stronger image, but they clearly distinguish between what they wear on stage and what they choose the rest of the time.’ Low Classic has become an outfitter to many of them. They pop into one of the brand’s two minimalist stores in Garosu-gil and Myeong-dong when off-duty and off-stage.

The American retailer Totokaelo picked up the label in 2016. ‘It was – and is – sophisticated and quirky. Easy to style and most importantly, it’s accessible. It feels designed for confident people who want something easy to wear,’ Esther Min, senior merchandise manager of womenswear says. ‘Korean fashion has increasingly become a focal point for original design. The trend follows other culture points which are becoming more apparent and appreciated in the West too – food, music, art, and even celebrity personalities. As a Korean American, I’m proud. As a consumer, I’m really excited.’

Myungshin heads up the design of the collection after focusing on tailoring at Konkuk. The day-to-day management is overseen by Hwang Hyun-ji who majored in product development and merchandising. She also designs the more trend-focused, second-line Locle. Park Jin-sun worked as a magazine assistant during the semester and is currently studying visual arts in Berlin. She directs all of the campaign and ‘Lowbook’ imagery that has made the label an Instagram hit. ‘We each agreed to take it in turns to study more but only when the other returns… Park is still in Berlin for another four years! So, we meet every summer either in Berlin, Paris or London,’ Myungshin laughs. It sounds like the right way to create clothes that speak to a global audience.

‘Classic is something that you like, something that you feel comfortable in,’ she says. ‘Low Classics are easy to wear. There is always a lightness, an ease.’ Closing the A/W 2018 show was model Hyeseung Lee. Wearing a long, bias-cut jersey dress over slim slacks with a billowing, waxed trench all in inky blue, she is the classic Low Classic woman. ‘She is strong. She is into music. She is the type of girl that doesn’t follow what her agency tells her to do,’ Myungshin says. ‘She just does exactly what she likes.’ 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Low Classic website

ADDRESS

Low Classic
57 Nonhyeon-ro 159-gil
Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu
Seoul
82.2 516 2004

Low Classic
8-13 Myeongdong 8-gil
Jung-gu
Seoul
82.2 335 5004

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The city of Seoul is electric; a metropolitan stage for youthful, inquisitive fashion more concerned with confronting Confucian values than feeding fleeting trends. ‘Korean designers are bold. Unafraid to break barriers and conventional stereotypes,’ says Selfridges women's designwear buying manager Jeannie Lee. ‘Korean fashion has an energy that is highly creative, rebellious and exciting.’ The prevailing mood at S/S 2018 Hera Seoul Fashion Week last month was un-gendered, un-filtered and un-uniform; revelling in a quest for what’s next.

Despite the global proliferation of everything K-style – from gold facial sheet masks to surreal multi-boy/girl band pop – Korean designers are largely underrepresented in the West. Until now. This month, Selfridges is playing host to a pop up featuring ten Korean labels in the store's Designers Galleries atrium space – the first time many of them have been on sale outside of Asia. ‘Now they are open to the global market, they have to be a global designer,’ says the executive director of Seoul Fashion Week, Kuho Jung.

Blindness S/S 2018

Since taking on the role in 2015, Jung’s vision has been to expose his country’s design talents to the world: ‘They have to look at their work from a global standard. They have to work even harder.’ A veteran designer of his eponymous label, Jung is also a vice president at Fila Korea and a consultant on the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics. His approach is egalitarian. In the spacey, neo-futurist atrium of the Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza, every evening DJs played a mix of electro and dance hits to a milling crowd.

Teens sat at tables sipping free iced coffee, ogling a giant TV showing celebrities as they arrived; children sauntered through the crowds, dressed up in trend-conscious clothes, snapped by photographers as their mothers stood out of shot, beaming with pride. ‘Fashion week has always been like a party,’ Jung says, ‘but it is a party only for the few. I want global people to come and see what we’re about but local, young people too. I want this to be a big global fashion party.’

Does luxury fashion become more egalitarian thanks to a high-definition live stream or a free branded tote-bag? Globally, fashion brands are busy cosying up to their consumers via lurid social media campaigns or gargantuan travelling exhibitions. Yet in Seoul, the shows – with their glossy front row guests, the paparazzi, the frenzy – created a buzz that Jung is passionate for everyone to feel. Every fashion week, the public can sign up online for tickets so that, ‘the next generation can learn about fashion’. This is fashion boot camp.

At Bourie, cuffs were sliced away on shirt dresses; the louche shirts and trousers of Low Classic had a more European élan. Chang Kwang Hyo hacked off short sleeves, tacking them onto sheer sports tops at Caruso; at Pushbutton, a trench had a shirting back. These clothes were representative of an undoing of formality; the unfurling of traditional values.

MÜNN S/S 2018

The designer Hyun-min Han launched his menswear label MÜNN in 2013, bringing together a 1960s made-to-order quality with future silhouettes. ‘I love tailoring,’ he said after his S/S 2018 show of sartorial sportswear in fine technical fabrics. His label is stocked internationally at stores including Selfridges in London, Galeries Lafayette in Beijing and Harvey Nichols in Hong Kong. In its exposure of construction, his latest collection took inspiration from the public brick sculptures of British artist and designer Alex Chinneck

‘The Korean fashion trend is very streetwear focused, so I am always exploring new perspectives for tailoring and shirting,’ Han says. ‘Seoul is becoming a more diverse place and the trends are moving so fast, so it gives me a lot of ideas on how to merge things together and approach menswear in a new way.’ MÜNN was conceived to break the continuous exposure we have to images and trends: ‘I wanted to create a new sensual experience for a new audience.’

Everywhere you turn someone is taking a selfie or using their phone to broadcast their day to an unspecific audience. This isn’t a predicament unique to Seoul of course, yet the colossal value placed on image and self-improvement has created a rich, if bumpy, terrain for designers to navigate. Korean fashion as we are now seeing it has only been around for the last 30 years or so.

It was in 1988, the same year Seoul held the winter Olympics, that Madame Woo – the designer behind the venerated Wooyoungmi label – noticed a yearning among fashionable young Koreans for clothes with a more global style. A flood of luxury stores began to open across the city, bringing a more western outlook to what Woo describes as an incredibly conservative society.

She created Solid Homme – a range of well-priced, just left-of-centre menswear – and today she is the doyenne of contemporary fashion in South Korea. ‘The speed at which society became liberal was incredible,’ she remembers. ‘Koreans quickly absorbed these changes through the generations to what we see nowadays, where they push the boundaries for the rest of the world.’

The work of KyuYong Shin and JiSun Park – the discreet couple behind the buzzy label Blindness – is perhaps the apex of this new Seoul style. They made the 2017 LVMH Prize shortlist with a dynamic approach that fuses queer contemporary politics with racy club culture: clothes for a less binary society. Their brand of millennial gothic romance, using pearls and lace with parachuting and wool, is sold at Barneys New York, L'Éclaireur in Paris and Selfridges in London.

Madame Woo was front row at their latest show: ‘It was such a pleasure to see a duo express their own identity and not necessarily changing to what society says will sell,’ she says. ‘That’s my advice to all young designers no matter where they are – always focus on yourself and what you want to design. Accept that you will be exhausted, but always try to get some rest.’ After all, the party is just getting started.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Seoul Fashion Week website

Looks like the immediate future of street fashion might just be K-style – aka quick turnaround cool sportswear in South Korea is going great ‘soft’ guns. Dip your toes into Seoul Fashion Week and one will find modish brands, fad driven labels and a bunch of talented designers primed to play in the global fashion market.

Seoul Fashion Week has in fact being going for aeons (nearly as along as London Fashion Week) but primarily it was a domestic affair serving a fashion hungry audience that has always been keen to show off its pop-tastic savvy. To note: the average age of the front row audience is twenty-something and the social media fodder in this highly wired city is wondrous. Even toddler ‘influencers’ dressed like Pharrell Williams and PSY were afforded prime seats along side girls who dress like boys and he/she’s and she former he’s. Note: swallows and amazons matelot looks are very ‘in.’

Given that K-movies, pop and tech have already spread far and wide (via numerous Hollywood, tech giant mergers with South Korea’s dynastic corporate business – LG, Samsung et al) fashion and beauty are next on the list for global expansion thanks to a strategic government and corporate investiture. 

From an outsider view, there’s a deep parallel with Tony Blair’s ‘Rock The Boat,’ adoption of Brit Pop in the late nineties and the intense building of the creative economy in London – a force field that David Cameron has so wisely tapped. Indeed, ‘Gangnam Style’ (2012) might just have been Oasis’ ‘Champagne Supernova’ (1997) in terms of providing an anthem. 

But who’s to look out for now post the hyperbolic pink, spiky Versace fad? Brands such as Vlades that declared ‘High Fashion is Dead,’ on outsize sweatshirts and Moohong with its reconstructed tailoring in jacquards and fine wools plus giant shoulder pads looked compelling, super well made and aligned with respectively Rick Owens and Vetements. This K twister is shifting from cheesy to soulful; flash to thoughtful; synthetic to artisan; screechy to rootsy – and to the bluesy rap of bands like HighGrnd. 

Pushbutton has a nice line in outsize pretty smock dresses and super padded coats, while SYJP (a denim diffusion line from Stevie J and Joni P) proved that wearing the blues everyday can look pretty. 

With fashion being in hyper real moment (authentic items reprised via proportions, slogans and noble fabrications) Seoul has a lot to offer. But who buys from nations any more? Creative capital is transmitted by nodes across the globe. ‘The fashion business got going at the end of the 1980s and it was a big wave. It was hit with the Asian financial crisis but picked up again in the noughties. Fashion in Korea has always been big but never got a chance to go out of Korea until about five years ago when brands and designers got noticed with the K pop boom,’ says Jung Kuho, executive director of Seoul Fashion Week. Jung, who built his own highly successful menswear label called Kuho in New York has deep experience in the field. ‘The timing is right – the next five years will see a big expansion into the global market. The first thing is promoting and letting people know we are here and what we are doing,’ says Jung who now also operates as creative director of Fila.  Magazines like the elegant A5 size UrbanLike (set up three years ago) are documenting the Seoul scene.

If Seoul had cousin cities rather than one twin – they might just be London, Paris, Florence, LA, Shanghai and Vancouver. If you are ready to boomerang, style nodes these days can hop/skip very far.

INFORMATION

Seoul Fashion Week ran from 21 - 26 March 2016. For more information, visit the website

2015 has been a stellar year for Seoul in the fashion stakes. In addition to hosting Chanel’s 2016 Cruise show back in May, and Dior’s largest and most striking flagship opening in the stylish Gangnam District in July, this past week the city’s Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) housed the revamped S/S 2016 Hera Seoul Fashion Week under the new direction of Kuho Jung.

‘Style wise you will see a bold, pop-culture approach contrasted with a minimal, avant-garde aesthetic,’ predicted Jung of the event’s two key style camps, which also dominated its surrounding street style – some of the best in the world, even without designer press rail access.

For Jung, who studied at New York's Parsons in the late 1980s and was more recently creative director of Samsung’s fashion division, the most important message behind the bolstered event was that it met international standards: ‘Seoul Fashion Week has been here for 15 years, but it has never been exposed to foreign influencers,’ he says. ‘This is the right time to expose ourselves to the global market.’

‘It was exciting to see first-hand the next generation of emerging talent,’ says Natalie Kingham, buying director of MatchesFashion who was on the ground and on the hunt. ‘I think there is a huge amount of design potential in this market. Two brands I would highlight right now as ones-to-watch are Soulpot Studio and Low Classic.’

Like many international fashion weeks outside of the four show capitals, this one could do with a tighter edit, both in terms of what was vetted for the seven-day, 66 show schedule, and the number of runway looks shown – entire colourways could have been held back for the buyer’s showroom – but this also differentiated between the brands destined for the international playing field and those content with the domestic market.

Overall, on and off the catwalk, designers and fashion enthusiasts alike appeared to be deeply cemented within the street and sportswear sphere. Menswear was a particular strength, along with the city’s male models, who would do well to pack themselves off to Paris, pronto.

The men’s market’s gutsy experimentation with the humble pant should also be commended: culottes, asymmetric pant lengths, fisherman styles, paper bag waists, drop crotches, tight leather, baggy denim – we saw it all as they collectively pushed the boat out on the trouser. Topcoat length suit jackets, extra long sleeved shirting and monochromatic tailoring also dominated these proceedings, while seersucker, Airtex, leather and terry toweling fabrics ruled material matters. In these parts sneakers, skater slip-ons and sporty slides were de rigueur – even on the women’s runways, and definitely about the venue.

‘I was blown away by what people were wearing on the street,’ says Damien Paul, MatchesFashion.com’s head of menswear. ‘The way they mixed established and up-and-coming international brands was just incredibly cool.’ As for his pick: ‘On the runway, there was more of a contemporary feel which was interesting to see – PushButton, Beyond Closet and Kimseoryong especially.’

Indeed, much of what was on offer on the SFW catwalks sat just above the high street in this category; currently stocked at local department stores or through the brand's own retail networks. The city’s most impressive multi-brand stores in Gangnam  – including the Peter Marino-designed and Shinsegae-owned Boon the Shop, Mass Studies-conceived Space Mue and Rare Market – all seemingly stocked an international edit of big names.

And although local success stories Junn J and Wooyoungmi take their runway bows during Paris Fashion Week, industry patriarch Madam Woo debuted her second Wooyoungmi collaboration with Mr Porter (online 28 October) at her multi-storey Gangnam store during SFW. The spacious loft-like flagship also houses her new capsule women’s collection For Her, along with contemporary menswear brand Solid Homme, which has just launched its first overseas shop-in-shop in London’s Harrods, Galeries Lafayette Beijing and Harvey Nichols Hong Kong.

‘I was really impressed by how the first collection spread our brand DNA,’ Madam Woo explained of her first Mr Porter collaboration. ‘While the [mainline] Paris fashion show is very inspirational, I tried to focus on wearable luxury through this capsule collection. This one is more approachable, but central to brand identity.’

Madam Woo has taken a similar approach with Solid Homme, which was first launched 28 years ago, and now holds 29 stores across Korea. So why hold the brand back internationally until now? ‘The contemporary market wasn’t mature enough,’ she explains of the sector’s recent designer sportswear boom. ‘It’s a growing market and hasn’t been accepted until now – especially in China,’ she maintains.

Earlier in the week another Seoul fashion icon, Jin Te-ok, opened the SFW proceedings with her retrospective exhibition Anthology, which spanned the designer’s fifty-year legacy as a founding member of the Korean fashion industry. Her theatrical designs, which take cues from traditional Korean dress, are also currently on tour in Paris as part of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs’ Korea now! Craft, Design, Fashion and Graphic Design in Korea exhibition. That said, Te-ok’s intricate work often felt like a world away from many of the week’s runways, where it was hard not to notice derivative European or American tendencies.

Experimental shapes fused with minimalist lines epitomised PushButton’s S/S 2016 show, where staff sported familiar white lab coats. A moody storm trooper with a penchant for crushed leather and slogan tees sauntered out at New Gen brand Vlades. A sporty cross of Airtex fabrics, denim and leather summed up Resurrection, while directional shirting was teamed with frayed denim at Blindness. Later, a grunge slant was explored at R.Shemist where piercings edged long-armed tailoring and distressed jeans.

In addition to denim, bold print was another dominant category: established menswear designer Ko Tae Yong of Beyond Closet showed energetic Mexican motifs on men’s silk scarf-print shirting and embroidered outerwear, while coloured camouflage patterns dominated womenswear label Kumann Yoo Hye Jin. Baemin x Kye’s collaboration was made up of CCTV surveillance footage and the neon lights that illuminate most of Korea’s commercial buildings. Text was similarly an important mode of expression – with every second show featuring some form of English language word play, printed onto sweatshirts, tees and jackets.

But outside the trend treadmill, the message of International Woolmark Award winning menswear brand Munsoo Kwon, designed by Choi Boko, shed light on a social change currently washing over Korea. His show was based on the concept of ‘Guieoh’, which is a recent migration phenomenon whereby urban youths are abandoning Korea’s cities for small fishing villages, fusing their modern digital ways with a more traditional lifestyle. This was evident on the runway through nautical accents that were moprhed with a techno street flavour.

Finishing up the week, we found ourselves on another street entirely for the grand opening of new handbag temple 9014, which featured a shop-in-shop by Italian designer Stefania Pramma. Suzy Menkes was even onsite for the official ribbon cutting (or rather reveal, as a sheet that hosted a multi-media projection slipped away to unmask an architectural marvel designed by Sungik Cho), located just a few doors down from the equally monolithic Maison Hermès Dosan Park. This was just another example of the city’s bold investment in fashion, and the gap between its luxury behemoths and up-and-coming local design talent, which are together servicing all areas of this hungry market.

Industry patriarch Madam Woo debuted her second Wooyoungmi collaboration with Mr Porter at her multi-storey Gangnam store during SFW. ‘I was really impressed by how the first collection spread our brand DNA,’ Madam Woo explained of her initial Mr Porter collaboration. ‘While the [mainline] Paris fashion show is very inspirational, I tried to focus on wearable luxury through this capsule collection. This one is more approachable, but central to brand identity’

Solid Homme was first launched 28 years ago, and now holds 29 stores across Korea. So why hold the brand back internationally until now? ‘The contemporary market wasn’t mature enough,’ she explains of the sector’s recent designer sportswear boom. ‘It’s a growing market and hasn’t been accepted until now – especially in China,’ she maintains

Woolmark Award winning menswear brand Munsoo Kwon, shed light on the social change currently washing over Korea. The show was based on the concept of ‘Guieoh’, which is a recent migration phenomenon whereby urban youths are abandoning Korea’s cities for small fishing villages, fusing their modern digital ways with a more traditional lifestyle. This was evident through nautical accents that were moprhed with a techno street flavour