Her clothes are worn by stars like Lee Jung-Jae of “Squid Games,” Choi Woo-Shik of “Parasite” and members of the K-pop sensation BTS. However when the South Korean designer Woo Younger-mi made her worldwide debut in 2002, few folks believed high-end trend might come out of a rustic recognized for its war-torn historical past.
Woo, or Madame Woo, as she’s usually referred to as, is arguably probably the most profitable Korean designers. She is the chief govt of Strong Corp., an organization that controls two profitable labels: Strong Homme and Wooyoungmi. She turned the primary Korean member of the French Federation of Vogue in 2011, and her Wooyoungmi line is now a staple at luxurious retailers like Le Bon Marché, Selfridges and Ssense.
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Woo has lived on and off in Paris for about 20 years, and has had entrance row seats to South Korea’s emergence as a cultural juggernaut. It’s a phenomenon that she has contributed to and benefited from all through her profession, she stated.
Born in 1959, Woo grew up in Seoul throughout a time of speedy financial growth that adopted the top of the Korean Conflict. “The nationwide motto was ‘work onerous and stay effectively,’” she stated. “Caring about trend was seen as a social evil, particularly for males.”
However Woo had an unconventional upbringing that gave her a pure affinity for the humanities. Her mom, an artwork instructor, dressed her and her 4 siblings in distinctive, home made garments that made them stand out at college. Her father was an architect with solely occasional work who socialized with American troopers, collected uncommon objects and invested in his look. Amongst his possessions, she recalled, had been items of Bauhaus furnishings, European fashion magazines and an extended, leather-based coat harking back to one Clint Eastwood might need worn.
“At the moment, 95% of men dressed the identical,” she stated. “Fathers wore fits and uniforms to their places of work and factories, however my dad spent 80% of his ardour on trying good,” she stated, citing him as the rationale she ultimately pursued menswear design and is commonly impressed by artwork and structure.
“Truthfully, I felt ashamed by all of it — the best way our home was embellished, the garments I needed to put on — however trying again on it now, I believe my father was a really inventive, very cool individual,” she stated.
Regardless of her background, she by no means considered being a designer as a result of, she stated, “phrases like ‘designer’ didn’t exist in Korea then.” She didn’t go an examination for entry to regulation faculty, which she referred to as “destiny.”
To Osaka and Past
Woo stated she had “momentary illusions of genius” all through her trend programs at Sungkyunkwan College, however it wasn’t till she was invited to compete on the 1983 Osaka Vogue Assortment that she began to dream huge.
Hyunji Nam, the lead editor of Korean content material at Ssense, stated that when it got here to trend, Japan and South Korea had been on very totally different taking part in fields on the time. “By the top of the Nineteen Eighties, Japanese fashion was already turning into acknowledged overseas due to the work of names like Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake,” she stated. “However South Korea didn’t have the nationwide energy to assist trend in or outdoors of the nation, and most designers, no matter how gifted they had been, had few alternatives to point out their work in or outdoors of Korea.”
The journey to Osaka was Woo’s first overseas, and he or she was intimidated, not solely as a competitor but in addition as a Korean amongst a bunch of countries with extra established trend histories. She remembered the opposite nations coming in teams — coalitions of individuals from Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore — and he or she, a lone Korean. She stayed up the night time earlier than the competitors, a needle trembling in her palms as she accomplished her minimalist tackle hanbok (conventional Korean costume). She was surprised when she was awarded the prize.
“In Korea, nobody cared that such a contest existed, and nobody cared {that a} Korean was capable of win, however it impressed me to assume huge about trend,” she stated.
Woo bounced round a number of Korean fashion conglomerates earlier than beginning her first enterprise in 1998, a small boutique in Seoul, together with her youthful sister, Jang-Hee. “She was the one who at all times informed me I might do it, once I felt like I couldn’t,” Woo stated about her lifelong enterprise companion, who died in 2015.
They referred to as the ready-to-wear menswear label Strong Homme and described it as garments for his or her ideally suited man. “I imagined him to be straight and slender, the type of good man most ladies would need to marry,” Woo stated. The outcomes had been clean-cut, minimal seems to be that many on the time described as metrosexual.
Woo stated the label hit the market on the proper time: simply forward of the 1988 Summer season Olympics in Seoul. International vacationers and Olympics attendees had been flooding the capital, and Koreans had been turning into serious about how non-Koreans appeared and turning into extra open-minded a few variety of kinds, she stated.
Specifically, Strong Homme caught the attention of two teams of trendsetters. The primary had been referred to as Orenji-jok (Orange tribe), a gaggle of rich youngsters and 20-somethings, usually from the Gangnam district in Seoul. They’d traveled overseas and had been serious about trend with a Western edge.
The second had been Korean music’s first ballad singers, like Lee Moon-sae, Lee Seung-Chul and Yoon Sang, who catered to largely female audiences. Strong Homme grew through phrase of mouth and movie star publicity.
“Strong Homme and Wooyoungmi have been go-to manufacturers for male Korean celebrities for so long as I can bear in mind,” stated Gianna Hwang, a stylist for purchasers like Lee Jung-Jae, Eric Nam and Music Kang. “It’s not straightforward for a menswear firm to attain this type of mushy however lovely look that each these manufacturers possess. Her garments are barely oversize, as per the development these days, however general, they’ve a tremendous match, which is an important factor in case you’re dressing men.”
At the moment, with extra Korean celebrities touring abroad for trend shoots, there’s a rising dialog about including hints of Korean fashion to outfits. “There are lots of worthwhile Korean manufacturers these days, however neither Strong Homme or Wooyoungmi are simply Korean manufacturers,” Hwang stated. Woo, she added, is “a fantastic designer who solely occurs to be Korean.”
Classes in French Baking
Fourteen years into Strong Homme’s success, Woo stated it wasn’t sufficient that she was doing effectively in Korea. She wished to create a luxurious model for a extra subtle and delicate grownup, unafraid to be susceptible. And regardless of buddies and acquaintances expressing concern, she wished to do it in Paris, the fashion capital of the world.
“They informed me I used to be loopy,” she stated. “First, they stated I couldn’t do it as a result of I’m Korean. Then they stated it’d be all of the extra inconceivable as a result of I used to be a girl.”
Others instructed that if she wished to enchantment to Europeans, she ought to play up her label’s Korean-ness and make garments that appeared extra visibly Asian. “They stated it was like making an attempt to promote croissants in Paris,” Woo stated.
“If you wish to make it as a Korean, you need to promote tteok,” she stated, referring to Korean rice muffins. “You must make one thing they don’t have already got. However what might I do? I wished to make croissants.”
The French trend scene did certainly grow to be uninviting to her. At Paris Vogue Week, Wooyoungmi’s present time slot was rescheduled a number of instances — even after invites had been despatched — and fashions she had employed had been scouted by different designers, she stated. The gathering lastly debuted on a Sunday at 10:30 a.m., the morning after the largest Vogue Week events, to fewer than 150 visitors. Have been it not for one constructive assessment in Le Figaro, she stated, she might need given up altogether.
Woo vowed to change into a full member of the French Federation of Vogue, believing a seat on the desk was the one solution to safe the label’s future at Paris Vogue Week, however the path there wasn’t straightforward.
Till 2009, her group operated with out an workplace in Paris, introduced all the things — scissors, needles, thread — from Korea and labored out of lodge rooms. On a number of events, she was rejected by showrooms that wouldn’t take an opportunity on a Korean designer. Some of the humiliating experiences, she stated, was at a gathering with a showroom through which the house owners spoke over her in French — “Korea? Are you aware the place that’s? Are Koreans doing trend now?” — as if she couldn’t perceive.
“I held it collectively till the assembly was over and cried and cried afterward,” she stated. “However I confirmed there, did effectively there and left alone accord similar to I promised myself I might.”
Korean Males Glow Up
Within the final decade there was a shift in how Korean trend, and males’s trend particularly, is talked about.
The South Korean luxury market boomed and now ranks the seventh largest on the earth, in response to Euromonitor, a market analysis agency. Gross sales of males’s skin-care merchandise alone elevated 44% between 2011 and 2017. And, after all, as Korean males make investments extra money and time on trend, the world is seeing extra of them.
“It’s not like one factor occurred after one other,” Woo stated. “It’s that each one these components interacted with each other.” Then she added, “It was additionally me.”
Wooyoungmi now has 44 shops throughout Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. Woo has expanded into jewellery, equipment and womenswear. Final 12 months, she collaborated with Samsung on restricted editions of Wearable Wooyoungmi objects. Based on knowledge by Korea’s Monetary Supervisory Service, the Strong Corp. earned 548 billion received ($46 million on the time) in 2020, up 20% from two years earlier.
“Wooyoungmi elevated the notion of Korean trend abroad by proving it may very well be accomplished,” Nam, of Ssense, stated. “A Korean designer may very well be a daily at Paris Vogue Week. A Korean model may very well be bought at luxurious department shops.”
Woo, she added, “paved the best way for future designers to return.”
This text initially appeared in The New York Occasions.
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