Eudon Choi (Q3075)
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Eudon Choi is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Eudon Choi |
Eudon Choi is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
These days, bending the gendered conventions of dress is almost taken as a given. Back in 1930s Switzerland, though, that wasn’t quite the case—a fact that stood Annemarie Schwarzenbach, the Swiss writer, journalist, and photographer, starkly apart from the crowd. “She was such a style icon of her time,” said Eudon Choi of the lean, crop-haired androgyne who served as the central figure of inspiration for his combined pre-fall and fall collection. “In Switzerland, she was a key pioneer of this very boyish look, and was even encouraged by her own mother.”Taking thegarçonne’s wardrobe as a point of departure, Choi developed an approachable wardrobe anchored in clean-lined, amply cut tailoring—striped jackets with side seams slashed so they can be worn as capes, hulking moleskine coats with overblown storm flaps, oxford shirting with detachable double collars. Though the fit and palette of a few pieces does lean a little dowdy, the more chaste looks are lifted with flapper-ish shift dresses spangled with paillettes, and suiting figures in all-over archangel flower prints.Evoking the more feminine components of Schwarzenbach’s fluid style is a suite of looks that pay homage to the heady eclecticism of her approach to dressing. A halterneck gown in the aforementioned floral texture with a thigh-high slash, and an A-line day frock and flared separates cut from a sheer, geometrically patterned lace bring a red-blooded frisson to an otherwise relatively sober offering—a little more of this wouldn’t have gone amiss.
18 December 2024
Ironically, for a designer who resides in London (a city known for its gloomy and gray weather), Eudon Choi has a deep love for sunshine. Choi took a trip to Paris when designing his spring 2025 collection; he stopped by the artist Cy Twombly’s photographic exhibition and found that the two had a few things in common. “Twombly’s photography wasn’t the main focus of his work, but I was drawn into the beautiful light of his photographs,” explained Choi. “He just captured the everyday stuff like his home and work, but I loved that sensibility. Then I started to imagine what sunny weather encapsulates throughout the day from morning to dusk, and that mood was the starting point for this collection.”Twombly’s influence was present throughout the look book, not only in the way it was shot, with an emphasis on the high and low lights of the photographs, but also through the fabrications. This season, one of Choi’s hero textiles included a rayon crepe that came in both a golden yellow to represent the light and a darker slate to represent the shadows. The opening look of the collection, a dress in the charcoal fabric, featured tie detailings that started at the side of the rib cage and cascaded down toward the front for a daring yet sensual feel. Additionally, the same dress in yellow was styled with a pair of matching gauzy pants. At points where the tunic and pants briefly overlapped at the midriff, the transparency was a bit more muted, offering a different look.As an experienced tailor, Choi also brought in his craftsmanship to elevate classic pieces like utility shirts and blazers for a unique look. While for most people buttons are just tools to fasten shirts and coats, Choi used them to shape and structure his pieces. On a safari shirt, two pockets cinched the waist when buttoned but created a more A-line effect when left open. To avoid a flat effect on the shoulders, Choi added a button at the cuff to create dimension.Standout pieces also included this season’s take on tailored jackets. An earthy green jacket, upon closer inspection, featured distressed details that created what Choi called “a summer version of tweed.” And instead of using traditional buttons for this cropped jacket, the designer experimented with tie detailing. When the strands are tied, the jacket has a more feminine feel, while open it provides a fringe detailing.
In his press notes, Choi mentioned that this season he sought to “encapsulate the emotional depth and lyricism of Twombly’s world, offering pieces that blend artful design with effortless wearability.” While the designer is already known for his impeccable tailoring and draping, this season he proved he could also merge his craftsmanship with an artistic take.
20 September 2024
Following a period of recession—and with the challenging retail climate more broadly—the past year has tumultuous for pretty much every independent brand in London. And while Eudon Choi has been better placed than most to manage, with a healthy direct-to-consumer business and a significant customer base in the Middle East and Asia, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t felt some of those tremors.Yet while he initially felt disheartened by these tectonic movements in the British fashion industry, it eventually brought him a kind of clarity: a feeling that was in full evidence across his pre-fall collection, which saw him pare things back to the Choi essentials, relying on fewer looks and a sharp concision to outfit his customer. “Over the years, I’ve always been asked, ‘Who’s your woman?’” Choi said, leafing through the racks of clothing at his showroom. “I’ve always refused, for the past 15 years, to define my woman, because it’s never been about age or profile or lifestyle—it’s always been about the wearer’s attitude.” While Choi’s designs have often been pigeonholed as “for the working woman”—in no small part due to their day-to-night versatility and clever ability to be customized on the fly—he’s been thinking about a more holistic vision of who his customer is.Choi’s wardrobe building blocks—off-kilter tailoring, breezy shirting, maxi dresses, great pants—were all present, but often assembled in more unexpected configurations: what at first appeared to be a double-collared shirt fell away at the shoulders to reveal it’s actually a two-piece halter top, while a khaki safari top with a cocoon silhouette could be ruched to serve as a jacket or a skirt, and comes with a matching combat-pocket skirt. Choi compared this line of thinking to designing modular furniture, considering how each element of a look could be slotted together or pulled apart depending on the wearer’s mood. (An especially compelling proposition was a white button down with long tendrils of fabric that could be tied around the back to wear at the office, but just as easily tied up at the front below the bust to throw over a bikini on the beach.) And if you need more proof that Choi is feeling positive right now, look at those colors: that lime green maxi dress decorated with cascading ruffles of fabric couldn’t be more joyously summer-ready if it tried.
14 June 2024
Eudon Choi could have done away with his press release for fall 2024. The show notes detailed a fascination with Pompeii, but the Korean-born, London-based designer has never witnessed the decaying, patinaed frescoes that, for him, reflect human frailty in person. His collection spoke for itself.A lesson in color, Choi zeroed in on tonal dressing, but there was nothing muted about his swaths of sage, soil, soft blue, and sugary pinks. His skill lies in subtly playing with proportion, silhouette, and fluidity. Blazers (Eudon cut his teeth in Seoul’s tailoring studios) came crisp but comprised, with slits that fluttered when models walked. Bias-cut dresses boasted apron straps snaking around the neck, cashmere scarves contained arm holes to fashion into cardigans, and shirts looked elegantly spliced. It was a lesson in clever origami dressing, or perhaps Choi’s interpretation of the modular looks that have become a symbol of modern recession fashion. “I wanted to create something right for now—it feels more feminine this season,” said Choi. Some of the slinky slip dresses indeed came with dangerously low backs that caused necks to crane in London’s light-dappled Hellenic Centre.Those who bought into Eudon Choi’s Roman narrative will have noted the powdery, sandwashed finishing on, say, the cargo pants (which were some of the more modern pieces in the edit), or the raw fringing and inside out seams that supposedly evoke the fragmented and faded walls of a fallen city. “I’m cringing!” shared Choi, who maintains he wasn’t “too hung up” on the narrative. When there’s so much to love already—the cut of the trousers, which are perennial bestsellers, and the softness of those form-framing crushed velvet dresses—Choi stands tall just as he is, without the need for an empire behind him.
19 February 2024
In recent years, Eudon Choi has taken to approaching his pre-fall and resort collections as palate cleansers. His inclination has been to present what is (at least at first glance) a more stripped-back offering of his chameleonic wardrobe staples: layered knits, coats with detachable panels and sleeves, or trousers with inventive fastenings and belts, as just a few examples.His latest collection married this off-season commercial rigor with his instinct for a well-judged creative reference; for the latter, he looked to the work of Lee Ufan, the influential Korean artist who served as a foundational member of the Mono-ha movement that emerged from post-war Japan as a kind of earthy, philosophical cousin ofarte povera. Choi caught a major Ufan exhibition while he was visiting Seoul, where he first trained as a menswear designer, last spring, and also cites the contemporary art boom in Korea (most recently buoyed by the introduction of the Frieze Art Fair to Seoul) as particularly inspiring. “It encouraged me to focus on the materials I was using,” said Choi. “To strip things back to their essence.”Along with plenty of Choi’s classics—blouses with slashed sleeves and panels attached by buttons, the louche draping of his bias cut shirt dresses, ribbed knits—there were some new, standout pieces in the mix. The first look, consisting of an asymmetric riff on a trench coat with a single epaulette and matching trousers, was both sleek and practical (and came in a recurring shade of deep navy that neatly echoed the counterintuitively vibrant neutrals of Ufan’s work). Elsewhere, shimmering metallic satins and a painterly brushstroke print with a deliberately messy bleed around the edges added a further note of artistic flair, while statuesque woolen tailored coats and luxuriously soft knitted tanks looked ready to fly off the shelves. Once again, Choi offered a fully realized wardrobe of smart, grown-up clothes for his following of smart, grown-up women.
10 January 2024
Eudon Choi toes a fine line in ephemeral practicality. If that sounds like a contradiction, think of him as an expert practitioner of lightweight, comfortable clothes, whose construction nevertheless imparts the rigor of his tailoring training in Seoul. For spring he expanded his well-honed repertoire of breezy suiting and easy dresses, referencing the soft-focus paintings of the French 19th-century painter Berthe Morisot. She’s a worthy muse, one of the founding members of the Impressionist movement known for her nuanced palette and loose style. Her milky coffee browns, mottled blues, and muted pinks, lifted with shots of sunshine yellow and floral prints, conferred a grown-up prettiness on Choi’s collection. Also front of mind was the louche touch of Giorgio Armani tailoring circa the ’90s, gently making his presence felt via cutouts and draping techniques to elegant effect.Equally uplifting was the casting, which ranged from seasoned youngsters (and not just the rake-thin ones) to a striking 50-something named Sandy, who was making her catwalk debut in a pair of gunmetal gray, wide-leg wool pants with a matching collared shirt, its sleeves lined with buttons that were left open to expose her shoulders. “I was so nervous; I was sweating buckets!” she confided backstage. Another coup was the appearance of the legendary Korean model Choi Miae, a friend of a friend of Choi’s, persuaded out of retirement and onto a Eurostar from Paris to walk in the show. “It’s really exciting to have these beautiful older ladies and the diversity in the casting,” said Choi, whose favorite looks were all modeled by older women. Choi had partnered with the Korean skin-care label Laneige. “They’re known in this country for their lip balm, but the skin care is really famous in Korea. We wanted to create a light look for the skin, so this helped to achieve that,” he said. We’re squirreling our samples away for emergency facials when PFW rolls around.
16 September 2023
Among Eudon Choi’s well-established signatures—deconstructed tailoring, clever adjustable details, wonky shirting—one of the most reliable is his eye for a pop of show-stopping color. Which is why the most striking thing when first looking at his resort collection was its more muted palette. Across the 36 looks, Choi focused mostly on cream and black, with touches of oatmeal gray and tawny brown. Only occasionally was there—shock horror—a splash of dusty blue or pink to leaven the mood.The reason for Choi’s more restrained approach this season lay first in his source of inspiration: the lonely urban wanderers of Edward Hopper’s paintings, and the artist’s masterful ability to capture profound moments of inner turmoil, or contemplation. (The collection was titled “Night Shadows,” after an eerie etching of a desolate city street Hopper made in the early ’20s.) “I just wanted to tap into that feeling he evokes of the late afternoon or early evening, that ambiguity” said Choi. Given the day-to-night versatility of Choi’s clothes, what better metaphor could there be than that liminal moment between day and night?Rather than feeling dour, the the pared back collection was refreshing: a palate cleanser between the main seasons, and a smart acknowledgment of how Choi’s clientele shops. Namely, that much of his appeal lies in the ability to combine clothes from across the seasons—that sleek, spaghetti strap shift dress would pair beautifully with one of his boxy blazers from fall 2023, say, and a playfully cropped Oxford shirt would offset a swishy skirt in a bolder hue from any number of his past collections. The more austere spectrum Choi worked with also happened to foreground what he does best: off-kilter takes on wardrobe staples that are somehow eminently wearable.The dresses were a particular standout. A slinky see-through cotton organza gown featured diamond cut-outs tied with delicate ribbons in the same shade of deep, dusty brown, offering a more modest take on the trend for sheer eveningwear; an arresting trapeze dress was constructed from wide diagonal strips of rippling black and white fabric, seamed together with ribbon ties that brought both whimsy and a touch of something more suggestive. Most accomplished of all, perhaps, was a pair of structured dresses cut from Mikado silk that hit a sweet spot of relaxed formality.
The stripped-back vision might have been unexpected at first, but on closer inspection, the internal logic of Choi’s world shone brightly through.
16 June 2023
Eudon Choi has always had a knack for practicality, never letting his more conceptual flights of fancy distract him from the essential matter of making wearable clothes. Still, it was refreshing to see his pragmatism come to the fore in a collection that picked up the thread of his pared-back pre-fall offering, and developed further. It’s a sentiment that’s resonating right now, with many already noting that this season’s New York shows served as a kind of recentering for some designers who had bounced back from the pandemic with a more extravagant, devil-may-care attitude.“It feels really nice to streamline and just focus on the clothing and remember why I do what I do,” said Choi. “I’ve been really enjoying it.” (Another nod to Big Apple style? The setting in the OXO Tower overlooking the Thames. With its floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows as a backdrop, the atmosphere had more in common with a New York show held at nosebleed heights in a glass-walled skyscraper than it did with typical London venues.)If that makes it sound a little too sensible, know that despite the more minimal trappings of some of the designs, the origins of their inspiration were actually fairly maximalist. There were allusions to 15th and 16th century doublet jackets (a handful of Tudor portraits from the National Portrait Gallery were on the moodboard) echoed in slashed puff sleeves and decorative fastenings, while intentional dashes of sportswear were thrown in via sweaters featuring ribbed, varsity jacket-style mock necks and loosely fitted track pants in both gray jersey and light, airy corduroys. The tailoring, too, had a breezier quality this season. “I really enjoyed going back to thinking about building a wardrobe last season,” Choi said. “Instead of starting with, ‘This is the story,’ we started with the details: a sleeve, or a hem, or a waistline.” Consider this collection another set of smart, adaptable pieces to be added to his customer’s arsenal.So too has Choi continued making quiet forays into pieces that traverse the boundaries of gender, harking back to his initial training in Seoul as a menswear designer. “Our business is still based on womenswear, but some looks can be worn for boys,” Choi said, noting that, in reality, every look could be worn by all genders. The adjustability of Choi’s clothes helps where that’s concerned, with the functional ability to cinch or loosen certain pieces according to the realities of our mutable, ever-shifting body shapes.
Does he ever see someone wearing his clothes in a permutation that had never even occurred to him when designing it? “Yes, and I love that,” said Choi. “It’s like origami: it looks simple, but there are so many different ways of doing it.” What Choi loves witnessing most is watching younger members of his design team try on and connect with the clothes in a way they haven’t with some of the more mature, highfalutin pieces in seasons past. Added Choi: “They’re really relating to these collections, and that’s exciting to see.”
18 February 2023
For all the slick, studied pragmatism of Eudon Choi’s clothes, the designer also knows how to tell a story, whether that be subtle nods to a film he recently discovered, or weaving the vivid colors of his latest holiday destination into his palette. Yet while his pre-fall collection is indeed a response to a recent trip he made—in this case, back to his hometown of Seoul, which he’s finally been able to return to since Covid restrictions lifted last year—the outcome was deliberately pared-back.“I found it interesting going out to the shops there and seeing what the general trends are, and it feels very young and sexy and daring,” Choi explained. “But I don’t think that’s something that personally resonates with me. I wanted to make something that felt ageless—I think my clothes have always been about attitude rather than a specific age.”He’s not wrong: The general customizability and gentle sophistication of his designs have made him a particular favorite among a kind of post-Phoebe Philo working woman customer (albeit those looking for said styles at a more accessible price point). A more subdued color story this season of neutrals and muted blues—as well as satisfyingly chunky belted schoolmistress coats and billowing pleated pants—carried an echo of Cate Blanchett’s deliciously austere wardrobe inTár, while a series of playful knits and shirts that could be buttoned or wrapped around the body were a compelling foray into unisex dressing this season, harking back to his early training as a menswear designer. (That’s not to say there weren’t a few more jaunty touches too, in a few carefully-placed pops of lime green and coral red.)Choi’s “ageless” mandate was also about his reconsideration of the idea of the seasonal wardrobe overhaul. “I know it sounds like a cliché, but I wanted to think about designs that could really last in your wardrobe for a long time,” he said. Still, when we spoke, the cogs were already whirring as to where he might go with next season’s collection—and don’t be surprised if there’s a reference or two to Choi’s recent cultural diet in there somewhere.
13 January 2023
As with so many designers in London this season, it was far from guaranteed that Eudon Choi’s show would be able to go ahead as planned. Still, a last-minute change of venue forced by the events surrounding the Queen’s funeral notwithstanding, Choi’s runway this morning went off without a hitch—a fact he reflected on with visible relief after the show. “We had to turn the whole thing around in 48 hours, which was tough,” he said, in something of an understatement. “I’m tired, but I’m really happy right now.”Choi has cornered a buzzing market when it comes to easy, breezy, and eminently wearable resortwear, which came through this season in full force. His roving eye turned back to the French Riviera, a destination he previously explored in 2018; this time he took his cues from the life and work of writer and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, channeled both through the collection’s air of louche glamour and Choi’s decision to have male models walk. The latter made a surprisingly compelling case for the genderlessness of the lighter, looser designs. “I wanted to show the versatility of the clothes and make them feel more inclusive,” he said of his new approach to casting. Elsewhere, a print inspired by the murals of Cocteau’s Côte d’Azur retreat, Villa Santo Sospir—nicknamed the “tattooed villa” in French for its lavishly decorated walls—served as a more literal tip of the hat to Choi’s inspiration.A series of lace ponchos and skin-revealing shirts had a charming romance to them, while the collection’s splashes of color—zesty tangerine and a rich aquatic blue—lent the looks a refreshing energy, recalling the blankets and parasols of a sun-kissed Mediterranean beach. Despite the stresses involved in the lead-up to the show, Choi was noticeably upbeat. “I actually just started hypnotherapy, which has helped me a lot to be more positive,” he said with a laugh. “The main mood I was feeling was a kind of summer love.” With the collection’s brisk, buoyant spirit, it showed.
17 September 2022
Throughout the pandemic, Eudon Choi leaned into escapism, delivering flights of fancy themed around destinations as far-flung as Bhutan, the Swiss Alps, and the Amalfi Coast. But even as he’s turned his lens back to the here and now—expressed most firmly in February, with his first runway show since 2019—it appears there’s still a little bit of that dreamily romantic spirit loitering around.Choi’s resort collection was sparked by a black-and-white photograph of a 1930s woman that had hung around on his mood boards for many seasons. A member of his team identified her as Renée Perle, a muse to the photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue; after the couple spent two years swanning around the French Riviera in the early 1930s, she all but disappeared. “With everything that’s happening in the world, I was really looking for a great love story to inspire me,” says Choi.Yet while Choi always comes equipped with a charming backstory, the real reason he’s established such a loyal customer base is thanks to wearability of his clothes. No garment serves a single purpose; every piece has a trick up its sleeve and offers some element of customization. Thread the various straps at the waist of your trousers to make a belt detail, or just let them hang; slip into a knit top and choose which of the various openings you want to put your arms through, as whichever way, it will fit.If that sounds gimmicky at all, it’s totally the opposite. There were plenty of immediately desirable pieces this season, from slinky ribbed knit dresses in green melange and dusty pinks, to delightfully skin-baring cotton shirts worn open to reveal the knotted belt details of trousers underneath, to a particularly ravishing set of trench coats and shirts featuring broderie anglaise in the shape of leaves. With all the airy linens and nautical undercurrents that make for effortless summer dressing, this collection was a pleasure to look at, and, we imagine, an even greater pleasure to wear.
21 June 2022
Last season, Eudon Choi channeled the spirit of one of his film obsessions—Michelangelo Antonioni’s swinging ’60s psychological thrillerBlow-Up—with a lookbook that playfully referenced the film’s famous, Veruschka-starring photography studio scene. This time around, he continued the thread by looking to one of Antonioni’s most cryptic films: 1964’sRed Desert, a bleak, apocalyptic tale starring the late Monica Vitti as a disaffected woman wandering through a series of painterly but desolate industrial landscapes.If that sounds a little austere, rest assured that after being filtered through Choi’s refined lens, it emerged as something altogether more spirited. “Antonioni really went against the typical Hollywood formula—it’s quite disturbing at times,” said Choi. “But what really spoke to me was that he didn’t have any clear storyline and he was improvising for a lot of it. Over the pandemic, I feel like I’ve been searching for the right answer constantly, and I’ve grown a bit tired of it. I just wanted to follow my heart.”Following his heart amounted to a collection starring many of Choi’s greatest hits—playful riffs on trench coats, off-kilter tailoring artfully cinched at the waist, and dresses with tie details to be customized on the fly. The peppy spirit of the ’60s came through in matching headbands and a new handbag collaboration with the French brand Louis Quatorze, full of bright colors and sculptural shapes that echoed Choi’s more abstract silhouettes.As always, it was Choi’s eye for color that (quite literally) shone brightest, featuring a veritable kaleidoscope that reflected the film’s palette, from deep crimsons through to dusty ochres and scorched yellows. A final series of looks in arresting shades of hot pink and fuchsia—including a billowing belted dress, and a slinky silk shirt with panel detailing—spoke to Choi’s renewed sense of boldness. It was his first runway show since before the pandemic, and backstage he was visibly emotional. “I just worked with my team on what felt right,” he said of his instinctive approach this season. There’s no better way of putting it, really: Choi’s sophisticated offering just felt right.
19 February 2022
While Eudon Choi’s roving eye has seen him indulge in a series of charming flights of fancy over the past two years, each inspired by a different exotic destination, for pre-fall he decided to look a little closer to home—specifically to his early days as a designer. “I started doing menswear in Korea, and I was back there recently, which got me thinking about the memories of when I just started,” said Choi. “I just wanted to bring back that feeling of when I first began in fashion, and how I fell in love with it.”One of Choi’s most abiding memories from this time was his discovery of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 classicBlow-Up, and its gently satirical vision of the Swinging Sixties fashion scene in London through the lens of a David Bailey–esque photographer who accidentally witnesses a murder. (This inspiration came through most palpably in the backdrop for the look book, which forewent Choi’s typically more lavish sets in favor of a stark photographer’s studio, echoing the film’s infamous scene starring Veruschka posing on an infinity curve.)When it came to the clothes, however, Choi steered away from more literal parallels, instead using the reference as a starting point to explore anew the 1960s menswear that inspired him as a young designer. An emphasis on form-fitting tailoring—here explored in a dandyish, dusty pink suit with oversized pockets and a royal blue blazer with off-kilter button detailing—was one such example. “Over the pandemic, we’ve been leaning into more of a relaxed feel and making things comfortable fit-wise,” Choi explained. “I wanted to make things a little tighter and more compact, where you could show off your body a bit, so the ’60s felt perfect.” Meanwhile, instead of leaning into the decade’s famously trippy prints, he looked to painters that defined the era to inform his eclectic color palette—from the everyday people immortalized in punchy, graphic colors by Alex Katz, to the mundane objects realized in similarly vibrant shades by the British painter William Scott.While Choi’s calling card is undoubtedly his ability to take even the flounciest and most feminine of garments and give them a practical attitude, it was fun to see him play with motifs from the men’s side of the aisle this season, whether shirting with military-style epaulets and riffs on tuxedo bibs, or a trench coat storm flap repurposed as a shawl.
Just as you might find an unexpected panel or pocket when trying on one of Choi’s garments for the first time, his ability to find a new angle on a well-worn reference likeBlow-Upis proof that—even when dialing back to something more minimal—he still has the ability to surprise.
10 January 2022
It’s always a joy to see where Eudon Choi’s globe-trotting imagination will whisk us away to each season. Beginning partly as a product of the pandemic, Choi’s past few collections have been infused with the spirit of an ever-growing list of exotic locales, from the heights of the Swiss Alps to the sun-baked coast of southern Italy. This time his roving eye turned to Brazil and the pageantry of the Rio de Janeiro Carnival—specifically as seen through the lens of French director Marcel Camus in his 1959 Palme d’Or–winning movie,Black Orpheus.“I watched the film a long time ago, but coming out of the pandemic, I feel like everyone’s gone a little crazy,” said Choi with a laugh. “I wanted to do something that celebrated community through this story of young lovers.” Of course, given Choi’s ever-present emphasis on wearability, his interpretation of the visual feast of the Brazilian celebration was far from literal. Instead it shone through most brightly across the kaleidoscope of colors woven through the collection, from shimmering tangerine to punchy blues and greens. The Brazilian influence also showed in dresses and shirting in floral prints featuring hibiscus and ipê flowers abstracted through painterly strokes of indigo blue. “I wanted it to feel sun-kissed and carefree,” said Choi.On the more muted end of the spectrum, standout pieces included a brown striped pattern on cotton voile inspired by Brazilian menswear and a trench coat in ivory with a detachable shawl (or scarf or belt detail, depending on how you want to wear it), also featuring sleeves that could be buttoned above the sleeve strap to open up like calla lilies. It’s this alchemical ability to put an unexpected new twist on a classic piece without drifting into novelty that has become Choi’s signature. As ever, his clothes showed off plenty of smart details that will make them brilliantly easy to wear, and they were a whole lot of fun too. See you at Carnival!
17 September 2021
This resort season, many designers are preparing for long-awaited summer breaks with clothes as light and bright as their intended destinations. (After a year at home, it’s cheering to see clothes that you might wear to an actual, you know, resort.) Despite the imagined travels of Eudon Choi’s collections over the past year—whisking his customer away to places as far-flung and exotic as the Swiss Alps, the Amalfi Coast, and Bhutan—this time around he made an unexpected pivot toward something more rooted in the earth.The dusty khakis, sun-scorched yellows, and slate grays this season speak to Choi’s primary inspiration, which was not a destination but an artist: Specifically Ana Mendieta, the Cuban American performance artist whose distinctive work throughout the 1970s fused body art with land art. Mendieta’s “earth-body” interventions—which saw her subsume herself in nature by leaving ritualistic traces of her body’s topography in snow, mud, or stones—were Choi’s starting point. “Nature was the keyword this season,” he said. It emerged in a literal sense through the wide range of organic wools and cottons; traceable, ethically sourced cashmeres; and natural fibers he chose to use. “It’s baby steps,” said Choi. “I was hesitant to talk about it as I’m not claiming to be fully sustainable, of course; we’re just trying to be more conscious with our fabric choices.”Choi’s inspiration may be a little more cerebral than the flights of fancy of his past few seasons, but as usual, it translated into clothes that balance practicality with directional flair. Traces of his irrepressible wanderlust spring up in the collection’s prints, which feature splashes of hibiscus pink and buttercup florals. A series of slinky, formfitting knit dresses with fringed skirts have a palpably luxurious weight to them, while tops and dresses cut from thick cottons feature Choi’s signature ruching and fabric strings that allow the wearer to switch up from oversized to artfully cinched with a gentle tug. Particularly gorgeous are the trench coats and bags featuring panels of guipure lace stitched to emulate crochet. It’s Choi’s ability to find the sweet spot between disparate elements that impresses, even as he opens a new, more considered chapter for his brand.
10 June 2021
Without travel as the reliable source of inspiration it once was, many designers have turned to their immediate surroundings as a starting point over the past year. Eudon Choi, on the other hand, has chosen to embark upon a series of imaginary journeys for each collection produced under lockdown. In the spring this meant a jaunt through southern Italy, while last month, for pre-fall, he dreamed of a trip to Bhutan, realized through a colorful homage to the country’s rich tradition of handmade textiles.This season Choi found himself whisked away on an idyllic ski vacation, held within the opulent surroundings of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland. In the ’60s it was a high-society hot spot that played host to a revolving door of iconic Hollywood figures. “I wanted to look at that decade for its optimism,” said Choi. “I stumbled across all of these images of fabulous women like Audrey Hepburn and Romy Schneider drinking Champagne or mulled wine at these ski resorts, and I started daydreaming.”There were references to the Swinging Sixties in leather shift dresses and skirts with undulating rounded pleats. Nods to skiwear came via knitted leggings and hooded sweaters cut from luxurious wools and cashmeres. The color palette of crisp whites and icy blues, meanwhile, carried all the invigorating chill of a clear-skied Alpine morning.Most interesting, though, was how the collection served as a marker for the designer’s ongoing evolution, which has rapidly accelerated over the past year to meet a new and very different demand. For much of his brand’s 12-year history, Choi’s bread and butter lay primarily in tailoring. And while he’s still willing to put an inventive spin on the architecturally minded blazers and trousers that made his name, his response to the palpable mood shift toward casual dressing has proven to be surprisingly compelling too. “It’s about simple ideas that you can play with,” said Choi. In keeping with that outlook, a star piece this season was a knit with a cutout back styled in multiple configurations and colorways, looking just as good back to front over a printed dress as it does the right way round over a pair of shorts and knee-high boots.
It’s this newfound knack for adaptability—in the most literal sense of the word, since the pieces are ready to be customized on the go—that marks Choi as an unexpectedly savvy voice among his peers in London, consistently finding new ways to strike a fresh note in the face of widespread uncertainty. “I want it to be cozy and easy to wear, but I still want it to be fun,” he said. “I can’t just change my brand identity overnight, but we also want to be aware of what’s happening in the world. I want to be prepared for every scenario.”
20 February 2021
Like so many of us over the past year, Eudon Choi has spent much of his time under lockdown dreaming of exotic holidays. Last season, this propensity saw him whisk us away (in spirit, at least) to the south of Italy, with a breezy offering of linens in whites, dusky blues, and terra-cottas. For his pre-fall collection, his eye traveled further afield: to the foothills of the Himalayas, where Choi drew inspiration from the kaleidoscopic colors and intricate patterns of traditional Bhutanese textiles.“It’s about daydreaming of getting away and being somewhere calm and serene,” said Choi. “After the lockdown, we all wanted to escape and be a nomad for a few months.” With his background in menswear, Choi’s calling card is his inventive use of tailoring, which these days, he seems to be enjoying the process of loosening up. There were a number of tabard-like blouses and jackets that felt appealingly protective with their variety of wraps, folds, and knots; meanwhile, a series of maxidresses in rich azure blues and floral prints inspired by Tibetan rugs offered a welcome whisper of something more decadent.For all the whimsy of this imagined globe-trotting, Choi’s collection also felt firmly grounded in what his customer will be looking for come midyear, showcasing his innate ability to translate these more fantastical instincts into wearable clothes. “What our customer wants to wear is constantly changing and evolving right now, so we’ve mostly been thinking about comfort and a more relaxed silhouette,” Choi added.Another way in which Choi’s approach has evolved is his tighter edits, a decision that he notes is partly a practical one. “The range is definitely more conscious and considered,” he explained. “I feel like every single piece now has to have a reason to stay.” Concision suits Choi, allowing his vision to feel sharper and decisive, even while channeling a more escapist spirit. The collection’s title ofrewa—the Bhutanese word for “hope”—felt perfectly apt.
13 January 2021
A summer spent in London, in lockdown, is enough to make anyone dream of escapism, and for Eudon Choi thoughts turned to Italy. He had never holidayed there—sure, he’s visited Florence and Milan for work—but he was dreaming of a trip to Puglia, and then perhaps to the Amalfi Coast and possibly a few places in between. He hadn’t quite finessed his grand Italian tour when COVID-19 hit and the plans were quickly scuppered.And so he imbued his collection with an Italian spirit instead (the invitation to his presentation even arrived with a tin of olives). Cue sun-drenched terra-cotta and sand-colored tailoring in linen, and striped seersucker shirts in Mediterranean blue. And for balmy Italian nights, anyone could imagine herself wearing his black backless dress with ruffled shoulders for a predinner Aperol Spritz on the terrace at Positano’s Villa Treville. “I really wanted something that felt relaxed and light,” he said during a preview.Understandably, this was a smaller offering than last season—56 pieces as opposed to 120—but the collection benefited from a more concise, tighter edit. “I’ve been wanting to reduce the collection for a while, but when you have the pressure of a show, it comes with the added pressure to present more pieces to make the numbers up,” he admitted. “I’ve enjoyed slowing down, being more focused and making less.”That extra time allowed for a fruitful Instagram scroll in which he discovered the work of identical twin sisters, illustrators and ceramists Liv and Dom Cave-Sutherland. They collaborated on a series of sweet ceramic earrings shaped like shells, colorfully glazed on the reverse. Hand-sculpted and one of a kind, they look like the sort of gifts someone might pick up from a jeweler on a charming street in Capri or Ostuni. One might ask: Who needs a holiday when you can buy your lovely souvenirs here?
19 September 2020
“Home alone” was how Eudon Choi summed up the mood of his latest collection, a sentiment he no doubt shares with countless independent fashion designers around the world right now. Choi called on the help of his art school best friend, Jasmijn, to model in the look book at his apartment in East London. With little more than an iPhone and the clothes at his disposal, Choi took on the role of photographer, art director, and stylist; meanwhile Jasmijn did her own hair and makeup, posing nonchalantly in different corners of the designer’s space.The new offering spoke to that pared-back, domestic aesthetic. With the fate of his spring 2020 collection hanging in the balance, and many stores canceling their fall orders, Choi made resort far more focused. He also used surplus fabric that had been languishing in his studio from seasons past as a starting point. Indeed, his best pieces were a patchwork of shirting remnants, the tiered oxford stripe maxidress being a universally flattering example.Choi tends to evolve his collections only incrementally, making over his signature style with new textiles and colors. This time he took a different tack, gently tweaking his existing repertoire of reliable silhouettes. His popular multi-way trench dress was cut wide open at the shoulder and had a breezier, sexier appeal as a result. The peekaboo cut-outs in the back of his architectural-inspired button-downs and day dresses had a similar effect—they’re the kind of pieces we’ll all want to wear when we finally get out of the house.
13 July 2020
Eudon Choi extended his hiatus from London Fashion Week, presenting his latest collection yesterday in a showroom in downtown New York. This intimate, one-on-one appointment format suits the practical polish of his clothes that tend to evolve incrementally each season.The Korean-born designer had been exploring the work of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncusi for pre-fall and carried over his obsession here. The artist’s influence was most apparent in asymmetric, curvy collared jackets and the sculptural gold buttons that furnished pin-striped blazers.Choi has a background in menswear and a natural affinity for tailoring. His multi-way suiting and outerwear has proven especially popular—think, a trench coat with a removable collar that also transforms into a cape. Choi is now applying those mechanics to knitwear, with sweaters that can be knitted and tied in various configurations; working clothes that can work double time, quite literally.
13 February 2020
Eudon Choi has decided to concentrate on preseason collections and focus on direct-to-consumer sales via his website and Instagram instead of putting his clothes on runways. Everyone must do what’s right for their brand—as Tom Ford famously pronounced in New York—and this reads as a pragmatic decision for a designer of pragmatic clothes. The signatures Choi has established—easy-to-wear, adaptable office-suitable style, buttons as decoration, pieces that can be wrapped and tied—all spring from the sensibility of a Korean who went through the British fashion education system and has shown in London for a decade.Underlying all that is the fact that his prices are reasonable, and the as-seen-on-Instagram looks are commercially appealing in a way that is inclusive of different shapes and sizes. Choi was a menswear tailor before he found his womenswear groove—once you know that, you see why he can pull off collarless, gold-buttoned, wrap-over blazers and coats and make them work variously with kick-flares and tailored shorts. Through his e-commerce operation at the time of this writing, a tailored trouser suit can be bought for less than $1,300. He also has a strong line in minimalist yet colorful bags.This collection, Choi said, was inspired by Constantin Brancusi. It was hard to see that connection, but no matter. What’s more consequential is that Choi manages the psychology behind his clothes well—a woman can recognize how his cocoon-back and tabard dresses can be belted to be both comfortable and flattering, how large sleeves will optically narrow waists, and so on. Those things could easily be lost on a runway—and anyway, why add the costs to the clothes? It’s not difficult to see why Choi thinks it makes sense to communicate the appropriateness of his line in this way.
10 February 2020
Eudon Choi took a break from the London shows this season, packing up his Spring collection for a trip to New York. In lieu of a runway presentation, the Korean-born designer held appointments in a quiet showroom in SoHo. He’s not the only one reconsidering his place in the Fashion Week system. The industry as a whole is in a moment of transition as brands experiment with new ways of showing their work.It would indeed be tough to imagine the new collection making noise in the context of a traditional white box space. Understated and decidedly wearable, Choi’s clothes answer the call of a practical working wardrobe. For Spring, the legendary photographer Deborah Turbeville and postmodern dance icon Trisha Brown were touch points for inspiration. The crisp cotton dresses with drawstring ruching added a nice fluidity to Choi’s architectural aesthetic. There were new retro-style knit polos, too, a soft counterpoint to utilitarian cargo pants and Bermuda shorts.Designed to be worn together or separately as a jacket and a dress, his trench coats have been a two-for-one bestseller for a few seasons and came in several warm-weather iterations for Spring. With cutaway panels that button up and down, the label’s suiting has been a hit as well. Wherever on the map Choi plans to take his brand next, the convertible nature of his designs will set him apart.
12 September 2019
“We wanted to bring more sensuality to this collection,” said Eudon Choi backstage at his Fall 2019 show. There were dual forces operating in the mind of the London-based, Korean designer, who had been absorbing the very different surrealist aesthetics of image-makers Guy Bourdin and Meret Oppenheim. Their influence came through both in the vivid color scheme—which saw bursts of azure blue and tangerine punctuate Choi’s signature earthy tones—and the vaguely disorientating location. Choi inhabited a series of shipping containers that were plonked onto a patch of grass sandwiched between the Brutalist architecture of London’s South Bank. “It’s a reference to the fact that Bourdin often photographed in these grimier, quite industrial locations,” said Choi of the space, which felt at odds with the collection.When it came to the clothes, it was the suiting that really sung here. One belted, kick-flared two-piece in a lucid lime green had the front row collectively reaching for their phones. Choi had been leafing through menswear tailoring books from the ’70s, which gave rise to a freer, fast and loose feel. There were two-tone trousers and trenches layered over shirtdresses, and clever hybrid drawstring hooded pin-striped shirts. Choi played with fabrications too, blending tweeds with liquid velvets and patchwork leathers that brought a sense of three-dimensionality to looks that echoed the depth of field seen in Bourdin’s work. But it was Oppenheim that the last word: “I love that she refused to be defined by the fact that she was a female artist,” said Choi, while explaining the gender play within his collection. “She had such strength.” It was this combination of strength, surrealism and sensuality that made for a winning collection.
16 February 2019
Eudon Choi named his Spring collection Manik Bagh after a palace of the same moniker in Indore, India. The building is a beacon of modernist architecture in Asia, and, incidentally, it features a high concentration of carpets by the Franco-Brazilian artist Ivan da Silva Bruhns. Choi took inspiration from all of the above and ended up with an internationally flavored roster that, while in need of an edit (the show ran too long and would’ve benefitted from a trim), did have its strong points.These were: blazers with frayed edges (Da Silva Bruhns would unravel carpets to observe how they were made, hence the shagginess) and crescent-shaped buttoning; a slinky, asymmetrically closured cardigan in saffron-yellow; and a best-in-show cape-like trenchcoat that flared open dramatically with a dark copper linen lining. Also of note was a lanyard-like leather bag in the shape of a rectangle; all of these vague hints of modernism and weaving synced together in a subtle way that left a satisfying impression. But the overdone components—a plaid jumpsuit, a khaki skirt bunched up the side, double-belted wide-leg leather pants—brought that impression back down to lukewarm.
15 September 2018
It is often said that the light in St. Ives, Cornwall, is unlike anywhere else. Eudon Choi confirmed this for himself after visiting the small but storied coastal town last summer. “It’s the reason why modern British artists, such as Christopher Wood, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and Alfred Wallis, all settled there,” he said backstage after his Fall 2018 show, which dove deep into the relationship between these creative pioneers and their ruggedly romantic surroundings. Choi felt especially compelled by the work of Wallis, a radical, self-taught painter who took up the medium in his retirement, having previously labored as a seaman, ice cream vendor, and scrap metal merchant. “His naive application of primary color and texture really inspired me this season,” he mused.Steering clear of clichés, the Korean-born, London-based designer interpreted these stimuli in a typically nuanced manner, serving up deftly tailored wool jackets with protruding buttons, deconstructed shirts, and Prince of Wales–checked tote bags that were wrapped in a sheer acrylic casing. Vinyl trenchcoats and supersize scarves resembling plush fisherman’s knit sweaters also featured, as did a recurring drawstring detail, which Choi employed on the necklines of a sheer blouse and sturdy cotton dresses.The curveball came in the form of a glossy sou’wester, which Choi created in collaboration with the lauded British milliner Noel Stewart. “This was a very exciting development for me this season,” he noted. “We looked at the coastline and the fishing trade, but we also wanted to make something modern and waterproof, of course.” If the hats sent the collection on a jaunty bent, the jewelry—which was the result of yet another creative union—made everything feel all the more precious. “I teamed up with jewelry brand Alighieri,” he said. “The idea was to design pieces that used materials from the coast, natural but luxurious things that people might scavenge for.” That would explain the large gold hoops bearing a single freshwater pearl, then. “The catch of the day,” he said with a laugh.
20 February 2018
Where some designers look to the art world for inspiration, Eudon Choi tends to draw from an architectural framework. After last season’s Adolf Loos–influenced collection, Choi turned to the modernist aesthetic of Eileen Gray, and specifically the villa known as E1027 that she built with her lover, Jean Badovici, in 1929 on the southern French coast. The relatively modest house, which has recently been renovated and opened to the public after falling into disrepair for decades, is noted for its ingenious furniture—avant-garde drawers, cabinets, and fold-out tables that were all constructed at unexpected angles in order to fit the small space.Those twisted, angular shapes wove their way through the Spring collection today, with slits cut into breezy, double-breasted blazers like trap doors, and voluminous trousers tapered to the ankle with diagonal pleats. Choi’s clothes are of a more grownup bent than those of his London Fashion Week peers, and though the subtle black and white cropped pants, tunics, and shirting with undulating scalloped sleeves were certainly polished, his minimalist sensibilities felt derivative in places. Choi was at his best when he broke free of the starker lines of the collection, and the sailor blouses that were cut askew over the shoulders were a fresh take on Riviera style; ditto for the baggy, ’30s-feeling check and gingham suiting. Pieces like these are sure to find a home in the wardrobe of chic and creative nine-to-fivers everywhere.
15 September 2017
This collection featured a rationale as satisfyingly convoluted as many of its looks. Choi’s notes spoke of the architect Adolf Loos’s protominimalist essay “Ornament and Crime,” in which he apparently asserted that the imposition of decoration that must inevitably become anachronistic should be criminalized. Steady on, Adolf!If Loos’s word were law, plenty in this collection would merit Choi’s immediate arrest post-show. That “so now, but bound soon-ish to be so over” fad for outerwear (attractive paneled and strappy parkas in gray, navy, and khaki) and knitwear (chunkily waffled) designed to be worn seemingly half-put-on was a recurring flourish. Some handsome leather pants in orange or black featured an oversize menswear shirt cuff at each leg that attractively altered Choi’s silhouette, but were surely indefensible under Loos’s law. And he rarely placed a button on the front of a look when it could be transferred to the back. Choi’s subtle blending of color and patterns (often rooted in menswear)—houndstooth check, Bengal stripes, blue shirting, gray flannel—sometimes had punchy results. A shirt in banker-bro pale blue with a buttoned-on matching scarf was worn with a paneled black leather skirt that featured a Loos-defying sliver of extraneous belt looping from its inhabitant’s left hip: The combination of two banal-in-their-ubiquity materials made both suddenly exciting.Later in his notes, Choi talked about Loos’s Raumplan—the concept of contradicting rough-hewn stark exteriors with plusher interiors: This was subtly reflected in some satin-on-the-outside, silky-within layered and orchid-esque dresses, and in slightly fusty colorways near the end. If clothes are personal architecture with which we remodel ourselves every time we get dressed, then Choi offered plenty of pleasing facades to play with.
17 February 2017
Francesca Woodman’s haunting long-exposure self-portraits used blur and movement to communicate an ambiguously shifting relationship with her own sense of identity—and are tinted by an extra filter of poignancy in the light of her suicide at age 22.Eudon Choipaid fitting homage to Woodman today in his Spring collection, using his own métier to transmit a Woodman-esque mood of poetic self-contemplation spiked with the potential for discord. Choi’s background is in menswear, and here he employed its uniform codes as the cage against which his feminine vision rattled.Menswear shirts wrapped and coiled against the wearer, knits came slashed with comely perforation, and navy-on-white striped—but not pin-striped—dresses in a linen mix featured sailor collars or bishop sleeves that jarred winningly against the asymmetrical disarray of their hems. Mismatched buttons, drawstrings placed in apparent competition with eruptions of fabric around them, and a heavy dose of loosely trailing strapping were motifs that sometimes combined to create an undoneness too artfully excessive to seem authentic. When Choi dialed down the anguish—as in a silk dress puckered with an arc of gather on its front and a twist of ribbon at its shoulder—the finely tuned mood of sensitivity came though undistorted.Although Choi’s sole literal reference to his source was the blurred, blobbed polka dot print that echoed the pattern of a dress Woodman once photographed herself in, the collection was a compelling snapshot of the mood her work evokes.
16 September 2016
Today,Eudon Choitook the timeworn designer route of referencing capital-A Artists in a collection that wrangled with abstraction quite interestingly. The spiel was that these looks represented a dialogue between the aesthetics of Saloua Raouda Choucair (sharp) and Helen Frankenthaler (soft).The sharpness was expressed through tailoring twisted by details that included a single contrasting lapel, disjointed block color panels, and minute shivers of asymmetry. Cotton poplin blouses were precisely pleated but thrown off line by an open shoulder or half-capelets secured by knotted twists. A near-the-end brace of crepe-backed satin dresses of dark ochre and navy featured more counterintuitive capes and pleats, while a matching camel skirt and sweater—with differently gauged ribbing, angled in opposing but complementary directions—appeared more interesting the longer you looked at it.What was soft? The long crepe dresses with two panels at the hem spattered with blotches or gridded by softly colored rectangles—based on prints rustled up by Choi and his team. Worn over one of them was a camel parka with a sports-short hemline and buttermilk lining that was a softer embrace than a hard rejection of the elements. Another blotchy hodgepodge pattern, not unpretty, was rendered as jacquard on skirts and dresses with unorthodox splits and extraneous straps to “abstract” them.A century ago, Abstract art was transgressive, seditious, and confrontational. This was none of that. Choi, though, is not looking to shock with the new: His tics and tricks were pleasingly niggly oddities, and that dialogue offered no conclusion. So-called abstraction was here to be noted and enjoyed without ever threatening to disrupt the overarching harmony of this polite and pleasing collection of maturely sophisticated womenswear.
19 February 2016
Eudon Choispirited showgoers away to Gaelic lands with a palette-cleansing collection that sprung from the fantastical paintings of John Anster Fitzgerald. The Victorian artist, known for fairy-filled works that may have been opium-fueled, brought an ethereal touch to Choi’s otherwise minimalist spring outing. The sprightly references came through from the delicate sprays of pale blue lace that showed up on sleeves and skirts, right down to the pleasingly off-kilter, mismatched Victoriana boots. There was another, very on-point mood at work here though: the waif-like lines of the grunge era. This was a fairy fantasy with an undeniably ’90s edge. The decade’s strong, stripped-back feel appeared in the industrial slate fabrics that opened the show on layered dresses and capes, and later in the raw-edged drape shirts and asymmetric slash skirts hewn in tactile, Irish linen.As the dreamy chords of Portishead’s “It Could Be Sweet” played out, the palette shifted from cerise to soft peach to midnight blue with Mackintosh-y dresses that Choi intends to be worn “to smart gallery shows.” There was a breezy, oversize silhouette throughout, as well as a minor obsession with drawstrings, which allowed Choi free play with shape and volume. Gone were the harsh and architectural lines of Fall. In their place came a lesson in restrained prettiness. For the finale, these proportions became even more exaggerated in pale hued jacquard day gowns that provided full cover. “There’s so much body consciousness in the world,” Choi said after the show, referring to the protective feel of the more voluminous looks. “I wanted to create an elegant and easy beauty that allows an escape from that.”
18 September 2015
Clothing is personal architecture. For this solid collection, Eudon Choi evoked the cartoonishly reductionist Japanese version of brutalism that is Metabolism, referring specifically to the capsules of the Nakagin Tower in Tokyo (I totally had to Google that). You could see where he was coming from in the circular contra-colored panels that peppered the pockets of his jacquard bell-bottoms and bikers. The color-block clash of fuchsia and black in a harmonically proportioned pantsuit spoke to a considered appreciation for aggressive intervention, too.More broadly, though, this was a fine, tricksy collection rich in pleasing buttresses in which to fly through the day. Choi does good asymmetry, a strong kicky trouser, and a finely judged side split. His collar-up shirts in white and pale blue have become an increasingly strong part of his commercial proposition, along with the understandably popular outerwear pieces. The fabrics were rich and well mustered, unlike some on the first day of the London schedule. Perhaps the strongest criticism to level is that creatively there were no astonishing new propositions here, but that would be harsh. Architecture—whether personal and hewn in fabric, or communal and carved in stone—evolves in infinite increments.
20 February 2015
Georgia O'Keeffe is, perhaps, not the most original of inspirations, but leave it to up-and-comer Eudon Choi to extract something thoroughly modern from the artist's life and work. "I was really drawn to her personal style first," Choi said backstage. "She wore lots of lightweight tailoring and big, voluminous shirts." The designer was intrigued by the dichotomy of O'Keeffe's masculine personal aesthetic and her hyper-feminine floral paintings, and anchored his Spring collection around this contrast.Choi translated his inspiration well. The show kicked off with easy oversize jackets and simple skirts done in black cotton linen. These could have looked dowdy, but the subtle flounce of the skirts and slouch of the jackets—not to mention the choice to show the latter sans shirts—had something of a Katharine Hepburn appeal. The designer's use of ruffles was clever: He showed them at the bottom of simple black or khaki trousers, employed them on the hems of smartly cut trenchcoats, and often snuck some onto the bottom of just one side of a jacket. Sometimes they were almost unnoticeable, but you knew they were there, and they brought a softness to the range's more masculine pieces.Most playful—and intriguing—were Choi's floral jacquards, which came in canary yellow and baby pink. In one instance, the pattern was presented as a boxy dress with origami-esque cutout shoulders. The model donned this over a blue pinstripe shirt, which cut the sweetness of the look. Elsewhere, the print was fashioned into a pair of slim trousers with a large matching vest paneled with imposing blocks of black. A puffy blouse was worn underneath, and the proportions here—high-volume arms, big vest, skinny pants—were fantastic. Dresses printed with large flowers were too literal and felt a touch frumpy. Similarly, a long baby blue cotton frock with lace appliqué was moreLittle House on the Prairiethan strong, self-confident sophisticate. However, Choi's wide-strapped, striped cotton frock with massive pockets was refreshing, as were his billowing floor-length shirtdresses. These unfussy but still special pieces are the kind of summer clothes a lot of women will get behind. Dare I say it, they may have even appealed to Ms. O'Keeffe.
12 September 2014
A few seasons back, Eudon Choi was one to watch; now people are staring, somewhat obsessively. This Resort collection, his first, was based on the 2012 Bauhaus exhibit at London's Barbican—its impact lingered for him, and he was especially influenced by the wooden toys created during that halcyon period of German artistic expression. Yet Choi took a relatively heavy reference and turned it into something light and playful, with colors one might find in a baby's nursery: sherbet yellow, dusky rose, sky blue. For example, a tailored yet forgiving cotton poplin dress had bow details and linear paneling at the back—hot-weather dressing at its best. That same fabric showed up in a boxy blouse with more bows, as well as a couple of "work" shirts with ruffle details on the inside of the collar. This was a fresh take on the white shirt, and it wasn't surprising when Choi mentioned that his top sellers have moved from outerwear to shirts.Simplicity met sweet with a series of looks in mikado silk with that bow detailing again: There was a strapless jumpsuit, an uncomplicated tunic dress, and a bomber jacket that stood out for its solid, high-quality snap buttons. The inner child was summoned via a sweater with a rocking-horse motif and a sweatshirt that had crystal detailing of clouds and thunderclaps. Some supersoft cashmere sweaters showed those Bauhaus sharp angles and straight lines, but the effect was offset by the nursery-room colors. Then came the look with the most overt Bauhaus reference: a trapeze dress with a ruffled hem and patchwork palette—that was one for the art lovers, said Choi: "I was thinking the collection would hit the shops in October, just in time for a customer looking for something to wear to the Frieze Art Fair."Choi really hit design gold with the last looks in sherbet yellow and sky blue, all in cotton embroidered on organza. There was a knee-length skirt with folded hem pleats, and a peplum blouse and trapeze dress with a subtle geometric pattern was structured yet flowy at the same time. It showed how much time Choi spends on fabric innovation as well as design and wearability. Those items are bound to create a lot of excitement on the shop floor.
16 June 2014
The mise-en-scène for Eudon Choi was a set of black-and-white photos of crazed Beatles fans projected on the venue walls, with the soundtrack blaring corresponding screaming fans and the band's tunes. The carefully set scene reflected some of the pieces in the collection, but the stars of the show were the edifyingly modern looks that hit the runway, leaving us jettisoning the past and looking firmly toward the future.To wit, a rigorously tailored plaid jacket with statement shoulders was fairly contemporary, then Choi added fresh and sharply executed details like an oversize funnel-neck collar and lantern sleeves—but with one sleeve placed higher than the other. Choi probably doesn't even realize it, but he is something of a hero for the modern working girl. Case in point: A superb pinstriped "suit" with a longer jacket teamed with jogging trousers will hopefully sound the death knell for the standard-issue work suit. Another office standby of gray flannel suiting appeared, but in an exquisite shape. Among Choi's many strengths in this collection were the coats. Yes, the gray fur chubbies provided a bit of nostalgia, but the Prince of Wales-check capes and military coats were slavishly devoted to tailoring and hit all the right commercial notes.At that stage, the neutral palettes seemed sufficient, but then the designer decided to add color with suede patchwork trousers and angora leggings. Yes, yes, we get that whole Pallenberg/Faithfull/Penny Lane reference, but it wasn't even necessary. Why? Because Choi's last looks killed it. A white jumpsuit in a trompe l'oeil paneling, a simple white frock with bib beading, and a fluid black dress are future collectibles. He did himself a disservice by trumpeting the past, especially the tedious sixties, which is a reference that fashion should take a break from or kill outright. In fairness, Choi is probably too modest to suggest what was patently obvious—that he heralds a bright new era in fashion.
13 February 2014
Word on the street in London today was that Eudon Choi had a fairly byzantine reference set this season—something about a Korean princess married lovelessly to a Japanese king. Or vice versa? Anyway, sometimes backstory is irrelevant. Whatever backstory it was that got Choi to produce this collection, it worked. This was by far his most accomplished outing yet. There was a sense of specificity to these looks, from the show-opening asymmetric dress made from puzzled-together pieces of men's shirting fabrics, to the insouciant askewness of Choi's side-slung knit dresses and tops, to the controlled yet expansive volume of a strapless white cotton frock. Choi refined his pieces, but he didn't over-fuss them. The strongest items here tended to be the ones that erred toward a menswear influence: the shirting pieces and loungewear-style pajama pants and robes. (As an aside, apropos of the latter: Is it possible that fashion people have fallen in love with pajama dressing because we are all totally and utterly exhausted? Just saying.) Here and elsewhere, simplicity reigned. And the collection's standout look was the simplest, or the seemingly simplest, of all: a pair of pale pink A-line shorts paired with a matching T-shirt with an alluring backward drape. That's all it takes sometimes. A good look works for a Korean princess, or a Japanese one. Or whomever.
12 September 2013
What with the string quartet with the balalaika playing at the show, and the babushka headpieces designed by Piers Atkinson that topped several of the looks, it wasn't difficult to discern where Eudon Choi had sourced his inspiration this season. Yes, Mother Russia was in the house, and in a big way. Choi is a designer who likes a theme, and this one worked for him; it introduced a richness and romanticism to his erstwhile architectural aesthetic. The strongest looks here wore the Russian folk theme lightly, diffusing it into cozy sensuousness—to wit, the full skirts in organza or chiffon-backed jacquard, or the terrific pink knit jacket with a graphic panel of wine-colored leather. This was Choi's first season doing knits, and it's not surprising that his best execution was in his outerwear; his reputation as a designer to watch largely rests on his phenomenal parkas and mannish coats. Another Choi signature is his use of embroidered embellishment, which he typically deploys in a graphic way; the crystal florals he showed here weren't terribly confident, but they didn't lack charm, and in any case it was nice to see him expanding his vocabulary. All in all, this felt like a formative collection, with Choi working to add new dimensions to his brand.
14 February 2013
The London fashion scene is never short on young designers with a directional point of view. More unusual, though, is a designer like Eudon Choi, an up-and-comer with serious commercial knack. Editors in London haven't just been buzzing about Choi for a couple of seasons now, they've also been wearing his clothes, like the oversize varsity jacket he knocked out last Spring, or the Fall 2012 tee crusted with mineral-looking silver and gold. Watching his presentation today, you could see, vaguely, the makings of a Phillip Lim-like career—and it ought to go without saying, that's no bad thing. But if Choi wants to seize that potential, the first thing he has to do is embrace his talent for approachability.There were a lot of pieces in this collection that showed him doing just that. The themes here were Stanley Kubrick's2001: A Space Odysseyand futuristic sixties mod. Choi did well when he tethered those references to easy, modern shapes, like a linear jumpsuit in lunar silver or white. He turned out several clever Balenciaga diffusions, such as structured T-shirts with oversize sleeves or all-white looks made from a superb, three-dimensional mesh fabric. A lab coat in the squishy mesh was strong. But the collection lost focus whenever Choi reintroduced his super-reflective, super-stiff patent leathers. As an element, the material worked fine, as when he inserted bands of patent leather into his patchwork minidresses. However, an all-patent black suit just didn't look fresh, and overall there was simply too much shine. You got the sense that Choi felt obliged to attempt an editorial statement, when in fact his heart was in the small innovations, like the Escher-esque sequin embroidery on a slouchy black silk tee. That might not be the kind of piece that editors gawp over, but it is the kind they wear.
13 September 2012