Seoul Fashion Week was quiet this season, due to the ongoing departure of brands for London and Paris, as well as the low energy street style, not helped by the falling snow and rain. There was also a sense of stagnation. As many Korean designers tend to jump too easily from trend to trend, Vogue Runway has called for consistency—yet it is worth noting here that consistency does not mean retreading the same designs season after season, which a few chose to do. The eye craved something new. It was refreshing, then, to visit Generation Next, an ongoing showcase for emerging talent that had its strongest showing in many seasons.
Several new names jumped at the chance to put on a free show (on-schedule designers pay a great deal in venue fees), staged in a glass box beneath a suspended walkway. It is a smart move on Seoul Fashion Week’s part to accommodate them. If the city is to become a true incubator, its Fashion Week must find, cultivate, and support new talent, especially as the first wave of rising Koreans heads overseas. Here, five labels from Generation Next that could represent the next phase of Seoul fashion.
BESFXXK
Bona Kim and Jaehyuk Lim launched BESFXXK last year, after graduating from the London College of Fashion and Royal College of Art, respectively. Their brand name is a play on the words bespoke and fucked up, pronounced “bes-fuck,” and defines their ethos: to take classic, tailored garments and distort them. “We’ve never done particular concepts,” Lim explained. “We always look at the clothes themselves—that’s our priority.” It is also the reason, he says, why the models wore dyed and graphic patterned masks to completely obscure their faces.
This season, they chose to experiment with tracksuits, trenchcoats, and starched shirts by splicing them together—a bit of athletic stretch fabric tacked onto the back of a trench, for instance. Striped shirts with multiple neck openings (one gaping at the chest) allowed each to be worn different ways. “Depending on where you put your head, it changes the silhouette and gives you more options to play with,” Lim said. Indeed, the convertible nature of the garments meant plentiful styling possibilities, like a denim jacket with striped panels blooming from the front that could be detached by buttons. “If you think something is too much, you can trim it back and make it more structural,” Lim added, pointing to the detachable sleeves and straps on nearly every piece.
Eenk
Hyemee Lee’s Eenk (a reference to ink, using the double e’s in her name) is known for its leather handbags and other accessories, beloved by Korean editors. This season, she staged her first runway show to better showcase her overtly feminine, vintage-inspired clothes, of a kind with what you might find at Maryam Nassir Zadeh. Currently, Lee is in the middle of the ambitious Letter Project she began in 2013. Each collection is themed around a letter of the alphabet, beginning with B for Beanie, and will continue until she ends with A for Archive to complete the set. This season was K for Knits, and so Lee began by designing a base collection of plush knits in sugar pink, pale lavender, and other pretty hues. “I was going to wait until A to do a show, but the opportunity came up, so I thought why not give it a try?” she said.
Inspired by furniture designer Muller Van Severen, Lee kept the palette strong and the shapes more organic. Little collared sweaterdresses and oversize cashmere vests conveyed “a European grandma vibe,” as did a soft brown calf-length faux fur coat and periwinkle houndstooth suit. “I like classics from long ago, but with a little on-trend twist,” she said. These did the trick, and it was nice to see more desirable, contemporary clothes for women come to the fore.
Minju Kim
Minju Kim’s three-year-old label made a strong Seoul Fashion Week debut—the designer’s first-ever runway show—with a collection inspired by the anime series Galaxy Express 999. It was whimsical yet bold rather than delicate; shiny gold and green jacquards and laser-cut PVC ornaments featured heavily throughout the lineup. “I wanted to keep the mood fun and happy,” Kim said backstage.
Her eclectic use of graphic prints and colors on traditionally feminine silhouettes is a key part of her work, in a similar vein to Miu Miu or Simone Rocha. However, she does put her own twist on it—her voice comes through, and it has been a pleasure to watch it develop each season.
Tell the Truth
A lack of designed, feminine clothes on the Seoul main stage may soon be corrected, not just by Eenk and Minju Kim, but by Sung-eun Kim of Tell the Truth, which held its first show last week after seven seasons. “I started the brand to make pieces one can wear for a long time,” Kim says. “In a sense, the line is devoted to basics.” For Fall 2018, Kim drew from a ’90s video interview of Winona Ryder at the height of her cool, in which she wore a dark suit coat and buttoned-up shirt, then mixed in a bit of The Royal Tenenbaums to create a “retro, vintage” mood.
Yes, there were the requisite Margot Tenenbaum furs in deep green, black, and oatmeal, as well as a fun copper teddy-bear number. A steel blue version was paired with a sky blue silk pleated dress, worn over a beige turtleneck and matching floor-length slacks for a clean look. Tailored topcoats and high turtlenecks were a no-brainer, as was the overall effect—sophisticated and easy to wear.
Heta
The menswear scene in Seoul has been hit particularly hard by departures, and so it was gratifying to see Hoyoung Chi come forward with Heta, the unisex menswear line he launched in 2016 after graduating from the Samsung Art and Design Institute. Like many designers, Chi draws inspiration from youth culture, and many of his visual cues hit those recurring notes: a high-cut bottom to reveal both hip bones, paired with a low-slung pant, or a little bit of Raf Simons in the proportions of a loose pant and white shirt with a more fitted dark blue vest.
What felt particularly strong were subtle details that drew the eye: an embroidered patch of a woman in a colorful hanbok, tacked on the bottom corner of that navy vest, or beautiful folkloric paintings screen-printed onto a white tee. Traditional black silk brocade also worked well when paneled onto overcoats, mixed alongside Western plaids and recreational nylons for a delicate blend of textures and cultures.
