Six designers to watch from Seoul Fashion Week
Street style and androgynous looks caught the eye on the catwalks in the South Korean capital, where top K-style designers showed their autumn-winter 2017 looks
Signature simple casual wear and K-pop-inspired street styles dominated the catwalks at Seoul Fashion Week, but other styles, from androgynous to military and even Amish, caught our eye at the Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza. Here are six fashion brands whose autumn-winter 2017 collections make them ones to watch:
Blindness
Blindness, founded by Park Ji-sun and Shin Kyu-yong, came back strong this season. The menswear designers featured more of their signature, critically lauded gender-bending looks on both male and female models. Think gingham-patterned slit-shoulder shirt dresses, and regal strings of pearls hung in diamond-like configurations over a puffy jacket that could only be described as ’80s power shoulder meets Elizabethan. Each look made its own statement about the virtues of androgyny.
JKoo
Yeonjoo Koo and Jinwoo Choi, the husband-and-wife team behind JKoo, have a clear sense of what effect they’re after. This season was all about refining their style and improving their work from past seasons, said Choi. The collection showcased a series of JKoo’s signature oversize looks in satin, leather, lace and other fabrics. A floor-length, fern green trench coat wrapped in a series of belts and sashes was the highlight of the show. Choi said the collection was influenced by Dadaism, as well as the idea of self-respect.
“Self-respect really inspired me because that’s what I’m feeling right now… Sometimes when I’m working on a design, I feel really desperate, like ‘Am I doing good or not?’ Then I realise I need to have self-respect,” the designer said.
