Wooyoungmi (Q3702)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Wooyoungmi is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Wooyoungmi |
Wooyoungmi is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Madame Woo’s primary fixation this season at Wooyoungmi was that of the ABK, meaning the “American-born Korean.” She thought of the way South Koreans have historically immigrated to the United States in search of better lives and opportunity, and of how, in the process, they created a unique cross section of East-meets-West culture that has inevitably led to its own pocket of fashion and style.At a preview, she explained through a translator that she had recently watched films likePast LivesandMinariand had been moved by their portrayals of South Koreans in the U.S. She thought of the people she knows who are, she said, now the third generation of Korean American people. They’re well established and they’ve built their fruitful lives, and turned what was once “a very sad story” entirely upside down.This spring collection was an ode to that community’s determination but also to their style. Woo said that she looked to merge the “zen, minimal image of Korean style” with the laid-backness of American sportswear. She tailored long shorts close to the body to hybridize them with classic athleisure biker shorts and breeches, and tucked ties into corseted waistbands. She looked to baseball as a reference, utilizing its traditional whipstitch motif on the sides of jeans and as the closures of a run of charming cropped jackets. She also reimagined varsity jackets by merging suede bodices with knitted sleeves, and re-created a traditional Korean decorative knot with “yuppie” button-down shirts cut sleeveless with their shirts as the tie.What was most interesting about this season’s Wooyoungmi survey of this particular segment of South Korean culture is that while geography and cultural differences still allot fashion particular regional nuances, our now globalized, internet-driven world means that we’re all, for the most part, looking at the same references—celebrities, TV shows, fashion—when getting dressed. Madame Woo said she enjoys having Wooyoungmi exist in the liminal space between French and Korean, East and West, and menswear and womenswear. That’s a good thing. People in the gray area need something made for them too.
23 June 2024
At the top of the runway, a floor-to-ceiling artwork in swirling shades of red; the painted backdrop was a two-dimensional variation on the reflectiveruby earabstract sculpture that has become a fixture of Wooyoungmi boutiques from Seoul to Paris. For Madame Woo, it represents being open-minded, and more precisely, listening to the sounds of cities with the wisdom and compassion gained from Buddhist philosophy. One senses that the designer observes things and people with her senses heightened, which is how she arrives at collections that touch upon myriad cultural references across time while also projecting a personal and ultra-present perspective.The main through-line this season was an exploration of how Seoul is perceived by both locals and people who have never visited. But rather than obvious tropes, the collection created composite identities that were intriguingly nuanced. The opening look comprised the suit of an office worker (only the fit was more relaxed) topped with an oversized workwear jacket (only the fabric was a beautiful bouclé). There were several of these tactile tweeds, each time as a slouchy blouson or down jacket. In fact, many of the looks involved an elevated spin on utilitarian basics—see the chore coat in lush blue velvet with braided trim, or a uniform jacket in fine brushed suede, its patches boasting “PariSeoul” like a badge of distinction. In a similar vein were pieces originating from scout and school uniforms, which looked believably smart when paired with a tailored blazer. And denim, always the great unifier, stood out in flattering cuts and lived-in washes—so good that they should become a new go-to category for Wooyoungmi.Whereas notions of dress codes can often feel rigid, the line-up evidenced their fluidity. This was not the first time we have seen brands remix bourgeois and uniform elements with youthful freshness. But to Madame Woo’s credit, shimmery tracksuits and suits with overskirts captured the dynamic style energy percolating through Seoul, even as the overall attitude felt controlled. Throughout the collection were ingenious interpretations of Bojagi, the Korean art of tying knots, integrated into hoodies and hats alike. Madame Woo noted how she exists “at the border of European and Korean, men and women, young and old.” There, she is tying all these notions together.
21 January 2024
If the female haenyeo divers of Jeju emerge as a fashion reference every now and then (credit their remarkable matriarchal community, advanced age and inadvertent scuba style), Madame Woo drew inspiration from them this season to highlight her South Korean culture. Her label, Wooyoungmi, has been around for upwards of two decades, but only recently has she started to put her home country front and center. As the global craze for K-pop continues to ripple through South Korea’s creative industries, fashion included, she’s clearly determined to be part of the conversation. Not coincidentally, the signage has just gone up for a boutique located just off Rue Saint-Honoré, its opening anticipated for fall.In a preview of the collection at her Paris headquarters, Madame Woo mused that Jeju, composed of black volcanic rock, is often compared to Ibiza; so even while these singular snorkelers have upheld centuries of tradition, the island is also a holiday hotspot for young people. It has historical significance, too, as the site of a Dutch shipwreck in 1628 (the press notes were particularly detail-rich in back story). Even to the uninformed eye, though, ideas were merging, colliding and combining to varying levels of success throughout the lineup. Where filmy, liquid-like tops were a seductive foil to Wooyoungmi’s relaxed tailoring, pieces in Latex—both slick second-skin and puddling—did not enhance the looks beyond a stylistic conceit. Outfits composed of interpretative scuba pieces topped with a jacket—from dive to dinner—came across as contrived but could end up worn on stage, entirely as is. Seeing beach-ready looks that boasted bojagi-style wrapping offered more interest than the pajama sets. Then there were jellyfish illustrations floating on gauzy pieces for day and as more abstracted neon forms for night, both versions enchanting amidst the monochromatic layers. The floppy caps that connected Dutch seamen to the female divers were an easy accessory update and could prove popular beyond the runway.For all the aquatic allusions, the women’s and men’s ranges mainly toggled between a lighter sportiness and a darker sexiness. And they were anchored by a futuristic sneaker developed with RAL7000STUDIO that looked as though shimmery water had solidified into a clunky sole. Madame Woo should feel satisfied that the collection signaled a considerable degree of creative energy, even though it lacked a certain depth.
25 June 2023
Pick a front row, any front row, and the extraordinary influence of South Korea on fashion right now will be writ large. Paris, like Milan, has succumbed to K-Pop mania, and every VIP team worth its bamboo salt is adding a South Korean superstar to its celebrity roster, driving much-needed social-media exposure for brands and attracting screaming hordes of young women outside their shows in the process.If Madame Woo is faintly irritated by this belated, commercially-motivated courting of her homeland, after 20 years of showing collections that have elegantly bridged the gap between Paris and Seoul, she didn't show it during a preview of her fall Wooyoungmi collection. Instead, she said she was running with it, leaning in to her heritage more than ever. “When the brand was first getting its start 20 years ago, the focus was really on western fashion. Now, it’s incredible to see the influence of Korean culture and the explosion of Korean style. After two decades of showing my collection in Paris, I feel confident in myself, finally, to have the balance,” she said, her words translated by an assistant.Identifying a historical precursor for today’s K-pop talents, Madame Woo drew inspiration from Hwarang, which translates as “Flowering Knights,” an elite group of young male warriors from the ancient Silla dynasty. “There was a lot of focus not just on their skills in battle, but also their beauty,” she said. “They were like idols—like [Korean boy band] BTS, but back in the day!” Also on her moodboard were scores of images of elaborate gold filigree jewelry dating from the seventh to the 10th centuries. Madame Woo has often looked to the French Belle Époque and the glamour associated with turn-of-the-century Paris as references; for this collection she wanted to capture the optimism of what she termed “the Korean Belle Époque.”The opening gambit of her show at the Palais de Tokyo grounded this collection in the Korean city of Gyeongju, beginning with a projection of brushstrokes slowly bringing into focus the grassy hillocks that comprise the burial mounds of the Silla dynasty. Next, she sent out sharp tailoring in a clean palette of cream, caramel and jade, lapels enlivened with shiny silver jewelry to reflect Seoul’s futuristic landscape. Some of the collection’s most sophisticated looks came in chocolate brown, with strong-shouldered overcoats and bomber jackets paired with fluid trousers, their banana-shaped legs inspired by traditional Korean pants.
For the streetwear fans, a volcano graphic—repeated across cotton sweatpants, denim and a bouclé wool zippy jacket—hit the spot.
22 January 2023
This season marks the 20th anniversary of Wooyoungmi, but the fact that Madame Woo revisited her earliest collections when putting together the spring collection was entirely an accident. You see, they’d just relocated their headquarters in Seoul, and as the team organized the archives in the basement, she realized she needed to revisit that early collection, she said a day before her show. “The archives reminded me of the early 2000s ‘cool guy’ in Korea, and the world. Low rise, big, wide pants that sweep the street and then in contrast, tiny, fitted cropped tops.” The fact that these are also the trends the youth is experimenting with these days was not lost on her. “It happened by chance,” she added. “You know, life and things happen by chance.”Although Madame Woo is engaging with popular street style trends, her interpretation strictly belongs in the Wooyoungmi universe. Best known for her tailoring, the suits for spring featured an unmistakable ease; slouchy double-breasted jackets worn and equally slouchy wide-legged pleated trousers in matching-or-not fabrics epitomized the modern suit silhouette, but longer single lapel jackets worn with wide cargo pants (the pant of the season) or baggy denim shorts certainly sought to redefine it. Underneath the jackets were tight-fitting sheer tees, shrunken knits and cardigans, and boxy, cropped button-down shirts. Yes there were bare midriffs, but only one or two inches of tastefully exposed skin, sometimes wrapped in a sparkly belly chain. The sparkly “diamond” jewelry was also a ubiquitous part of y2k style, and here it made an appearance as the aforementioned belly chains, stacks of necklaces and perhaps most strikingly as belts, which lent a surprising edge to the more casual looks, like on a pair of below-the-knee baggy shorts worn with a cropped hoodie. It was skater boy glam perfection, and the shorts, according to Madame Woo, were one of the only pieces that she brought directly from that first collection.Over a palette of khaki, navys, greys, and workwear browns, were pastel purples, pinks, royal blue and a shade Madame Woo referred to with a laugh as “frog green.” Denim was a big part of the collection, except upon closer look, it wasn’t actually denim, but a cotton blend fabric. “It’s lighter and more airy than denim,” Madame Woo explained, “and it holds the color better.” A consideration for comfort and wearability seemed to be top of mind for the designer.
She explained a preference of hemp over linen, for example, because hemp has a smoother texture and wrinkles less. “Everyone is looking for new trends but they don’t want to be comfortable.”Everyone that is looking for new trends is indeed likely to find them in Wooyoungmi’s spring collection. As usual, the clothes were shown on men and women, though there was no differentiation between which pieces were meant for each. “I want it to be a shared wardrobe for men and women,” she explained. Indeed the folks of all genders who populated her runway looked at home in the roomy silhouettes, in the wide legged trousers, oversized jackets, and skater-ready looks. So much of the nostalgia for the early 2000s seems difficult to parse and adapt to as an adult when you lived through it as a teen the first time, but Madame Woo’s approach at Wooyoungmi could make anyone want to do it all a second time around.
26 June 2022
Four white doors—fire doors, the kind that snap shut with a vengeance—inset in stud walls broke up the space in Paris’s Garage Amelot, the multi-story car park venue for the Wooyoungmi show. Each time a model walked through a door and let it close sharply behind them, a tone was simulated on the soundtrack, creating a score composed of slams. Founder Madame Woo, a keen reader, had been inspired for fall by Amor Towles’s 2016 novelA Gentleman in Moscow, in which an aristocratic count finds himself under house arrest in the Hotel Metropol Moscow in 1922, and is shifted from a five-star suite to servant’s quarters. Hence the slamming doors.The novel is also the inspiration behind the balaclavas. Drawing an obvious parallel between the locked-in count and today’s COVID–struck communities across the world, Madame Woo’s keywords for the collection—communicated via an interpreter backstage—were “protection,” “humanity,” “elegance,” and “connections.” She imagined the count in cozy balaclavas and cropped knits, but still keeping up appearances, an impulse that resulted in a bright blue fuzzy mohair hood paired with a formal black suit, or a shrunken stripy vest over a beige single-breasted blazer and pleated trousers. Cropped volumes for both men and women were the big story, a contrast to previous seasons’ adherence to oversized shapes. Particularly contemporary combinations for minimalists seeking to soup up their classic wardrobe staples included a high-waisted, ankle-length denim skirt with a severely pruned black puffer jacket, and a short maroon flight jacket with hot pants and chunky knee-high boots (incidentally, on the streets and on the catwalks, hardcore, heavy-soled black boots aren’t going anywhere).At a moment when Korean entertainment is gripping the world like never before (Netflix’sSquid Game, its biggest hit of 2021, watched by 142 million households in its first month, has been confirmed for a second season) perhaps it was a missed opportunity to base a collection on a Russian–themed novel with a color palette referencing Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Then again, as Madame Woo, who established her label in 2002, said herself: “Korean culture is experiencing a renaissance, but I am the one who developed K-fashion.” In other words, she’s miles ahead.
23 January 2022
Even if remote connections abstract us into flat-screened incorporeal entities, you can sometimes sense the pull of a powerful aura coming from the other side of the ether. The gravitas and poise of Wooyoungmi’s Madame Woo feel piercing, even though over Zoom she calmly speaks Korean through an interpreter, while regally sitting in her showroom in Paris.Madame Woo seems to have a passion for good books; each of her collections is inspired by a novel she has particularly enjoyed. For spring, taking cues from Julian Barnes’sThe Man in the Red Coat, a historical novel set in Belle Époque Paris, she added her personal twist of narrative to the original plot. The literary references acted as a sort of layered metaphorical backdrop to a fluid sartorial play on deconstructed silhouettes with a slouchy/dynamic, urban Gen Z vibe. Woo called the collection a “genderless shared wardrobe.” She might be fascinated by a well-written historical novel, but she doesn’t indulge in nostalgia.Slightly oversized, elongated tailoring was heightened with imaginative additions—hooded capelets; high cummerbunds and corsets extending trousers’ waists; bibs in open wave airy crochet; sculptural sleeves contrasting the sporty lines of nylon windbreakers. Technical and performance nylon-based fabrics had a textured, crinkled finish; flashes of carmine red, radium green, custard yellow and powdery blue lit up a palette of serene neutrals.Replicating the collection’s approach, the video is an elaborate, stylish affair which reprises the literary inspiration, distorted through a surreal XR (Cross Reality) filter. The set is a trippy rendition of an Art Nouveau train station, intended as a metaphor for a new desire for travel and escape. “It’s time to be lighter, to pursue beauty again. Everyone deserves their Belle Époque,” said Madame Woo. “La Belle Époque is now.”
28 June 2021
Young Mi Woo—who’s respectfully known by her staff as Madame Woo—says she’s had a lot more time on her hands to read “novels and other literature” and to appreciate nature during the pandemic. At her eponymous Wooyoungmi brand, a Korean powerhouse which in pre-times always showed on the Paris menswear schedule, fashion has nevertheless continued as near-normally as it can. Madame Woo remotely directed the season’s presentation on French soil from her studio in Seoul.One of the women in the video walked forth in a purple coat and turtleneck—there turned out to be quite a bit of purple in the collection, across genders. Coincidence, maybe, but it’s interesting to feel how much the positive symbolism of that color, used so effectively in female unison at the inauguration, has already saturated its perception. Purpleness is bound to hold that meaning wherever in the world it pops up in fashion from now on. That’s good.But back to the forest. Wooyoungmi’s models—men and women—are seen treading through a dark wood outside Paris—an efficient way to show Mme Woo’s core strengths as a practical tailor of outerwear and elevated technical-fabric streetwear. She’s in the business of sophisticated modern classics—such as next winter’s coats and jackets with distinctive square shoulders, closed with a single button, designed for either sex. (Last season, Mme Woo said she believed in a shared wardrobe—a nod toward sustainable thinking—and she’s followed that through almost to the look.)Still, the task today is even more about fitting clothes to patterns of living, now that styles which were once intended to strut and pose outside fashion shows have entered perma-hibernation. In answer to the endemic psychological and physical effects of the past year, one thing designers need to pivot toward is the need for roomy clothes that don’t confine, which can perhaps take us out for an hour’s walk—street, park, wood. That’s what we see tramping through the Wooyoungmi trees here: a collection with multiple-choice options in the way of abstracted oversized field and army jackets, blousons, utility shirts, big cozy hoodies, and suchlike.The hoodie part has an adjacency to some other woolly hoods, serving as accessories. There we return to Mme Woo’s reading—like many, she’s been interested in researching the parallels between medieval history (plague, pandemics) and our own benighted times. Hence a kind of symbolic, soft, knightly armor.
She explained that the darkling setting of the forest also chimed with her reading ofLe Livre du Voyage, an experimental fantasy piece by Bernard Werber that travels between reality and the supernatural and mythic. Okay—you can’t see any physical evidence of that in the clothes, but you have to agree with the sentiment. To paraphrase Diana Vreeland, even while we’re attending to all our down-to-earth limitations, the mind has to travel.
24 January 2021
Young Mi Woo—who’s respectfully known by her staff as Madame Woo—says she’s had a lot more time on her hands to read “novels and other literature” and to appreciate nature during the pandemic. At her eponymous Wooyoungmi brand, a Korean powerhouse which in pre-times always showed on the Paris menswear schedule, fashion has nevertheless continued as near-normally as it can. Madame Woo remotely directed the season’s presentation on French soil from her studio in Seoul.One of the women in the video walked forth in a purple coat and turtleneck—there turned out to be quite a bit of purple in the collection, across genders. Coincidence, maybe, but it’s interesting to feel how much the positive symbolism of that color, used so effectively in female unison at the inauguration, has already saturated its perception. Purpleness is bound to hold that meaning wherever in the world it pops up in fashion from now on. That’s good.But back to the forest. Wooyoungmi’s models—men and women—are seen treading through a dark wood outside Paris—an efficient way to show Mme Woo’s core strengths as a practical tailor of outerwear and elevated technical-fabric streetwear. She’s in the business of sophisticated modern classics—such as next winter’s coats and jackets with distinctive square shoulders, closed with a single button, designed for either sex. (Last season, Mme Woo said she believed in a shared wardrobe—a nod toward sustainable thinking—and she’s followed that through almost to the look.)Still, the task today is even more about fitting clothes to patterns of living, now that styles which were once intended to strut and pose outside fashion shows have entered perma-hibernation. In answer to the endemic psychological and physical effects of the past year, one thing designers need to pivot toward is the need for roomy clothes that don’t confine, which can perhaps take us out for an hour’s walk—street, park, wood. That’s what we see tramping through the Wooyoungmi trees here: a collection with multiple-choice options in the way of abstracted oversized field and army jackets, blousons, utility shirts, big cozy hoodies, and suchlike.The hoodie part has an adjacency to some other woolly hoods, serving as accessories. There we return to Mme Woo’s reading—like many, she’s been interested in researching the parallels between medieval history (plague, pandemics) and our own benighted times. Hence a kind of symbolic, soft, knightly armor.
She explained that the darkling setting of the forest also chimed with her reading ofLe Livre du Voyage, an experimental fantasy piece by Bernard Werber that travels between reality and the supernatural and mythic. Okay—you can’t see any physical evidence of that in the clothes, but you have to agree with the sentiment. To paraphrase Diana Vreeland, even while we’re attending to all our down-to-earth limitations, the mind has to travel.
25 January 2021
It takes a few days of watching digital Fashion Weeks—couture and now men’s—for it to sink in that what links these disparate screened ventures is that they’re all about creating the suspension of anxiety. Can we forget the filter that months of lockdown has put in front of our eyes? Can we shelve the sensations of fear and tension that we may experience when we’re around other people? Can we reverse our feelings to the point where seeing unmasked people coming near each other onscreen doesn’t seem fraught?All this background mental chatter came up when watching Wooyoungmi’s video for spring 2021. It was shot with models in Paris in the same decrepit theater where Kanye West staged his Sunday Service during the last physical Paris Fashion Week, in early March. The designer Woo Young Mi stayed in Seoul while her androgynous collection was sent to Paris, where it would normally have been on a runway. Instead it was choreographed with a group of young men and women who are seen standing, sitting, and swooping their faces close to one another, emphasizing the movement of arms and hands. At one point, a couple presses their heads together with only a book separating their faces.The intention may have been to express the poignance of the physical tenderness that has been so sorely missing recently, but even watching from the safe distance of a home computer in London, the visceral effect on this viewer was a stab of anxiety. Public relations representatives who organized the production in Paris assured that sanitary measures for shoots laid down by the French government were scrupulously adhered to on set. Countries are proceeding at different speeds in a world we can only hope is “post-pandemic.” But still, subjective reactions to visuals can’t be quelled.In a Zoom interview from her studio in Seoul (South Korea is one of the countries that has been internationally admired for its swift and early containment of the coronavirus), the designer explained that the video concept was an homage to Pina Bausch. She’d seen a 2011 documentary about the dancer and choreographer by Wim Wenders a couple of years ago on a trip to Paris. The memory of the beige and neutral colors in the dancers’ costumes meshed with her feeling—in common with so many designers during lockdown—that materialism should be dialed back. “I believe that in this time, we’re surrounded by so many objects that people are fatigued.
”Woo Young Mi’s fix for overconsumption is a one-size-fits-all, tone-on-tone non-gendered wardrobe, based on the tailoring pieces her brand has become known for in South Korea over the course of 20 years. “I believe,” she said, “that wardrobes should be shared.” The details can be inspected in the calmer space that her look book provides: one person at a time, wearing oversized, slouchy jackets and coats draping from padded shoulders, fluid trousers spilling over humongous trainers. Stylistically, the designs reinforce Wooyungmi’s house look, a development of the kind of tailoring young people were adopting as street style around Seoul before daily life came to a halt all those weeks ago.Now that things are tentatively moving again, one of the conundrums that fashion has to work through in the new digital presentation era is how to pitch an emotional response to the times. The kind of visuals that worked in The Before won’t necessarily work in the sensitized Now; but here we are, all in the same boat, watching and wondering where all this is taking us.
9 July 2020
The dandy dynamic on the streets of Seoul, South Korea has a genderless attitude. The youth commitment to fashion in that city means it has the earliest millennial and Gen Z adopters of tailoring in any capital. That’s how Wooyoungmi, an established Korean brand with expertise in suiting, has managed to segue seamlessly from outfitting conventional professional dads to appealing to their sons—and daughters—under the creative guidance of Katy Chung, who studied at Central Saint Martins.The look on this runway was a pretty accurate capturing of today’s style on Seoul’s streets—loose-ish, elongated slouchy tailoring worn as an everyday choice rather than a required office uniform. Starting with black Lurex-flecked suiting, it set a silhouette which involved jackets partially open at the sides and trousers with fluid volumes created by wide, flat pleats. The body-hugging T-shirts and sloppy sweaters gave a nod to the minimalism of the ’90s—a time revered by a generation which was only just born then.According to notes sent by Chung, the backstory behind the collection was the film version of Virginia Woolf’sOrlando, starring Tilda Swinton—the tale Woolf told of shifting gender identity eons before the term non-binary became accepted currency. That accounted for Swinton’s face appearing printed on a couple of the stretch body-con T-shirts, and the Elizabethan doublet-like construction of a velvet bomber. Only a footnote, really—but one that Chung probably thought she should include to point to the ‘shared wardrobe’ nature of the Wooyoungmi lifestyle.
19 January 2020
The flow of fashion culture from the West to the male youth of Asia turned in the opposite direction in Katie Chung’s Spring collection. Based in Seoul, epicenter of a generation of clued-up, hyperstylish boys, she brought the energy of City Pop, a cult style and music revival, to her show in Paris. “City Pop took off in Japan in the ’70s and ’80s, when the economy was booming. Kids looked to American lifestyles in Miami, L.A., and Hawaii and wanted some of it. They invented this whole jazz-electronic New Wave fusion of their own, with a beach-in-the-city look and Hockney-like posters,” she explained. “For a long time, people thought it was uncool. Now kids have started listening to it again—there’s a whole underground City Pop thing going on. But,” she added, “of course, every revival looks different—boys are wearing it in their own modern way.”Chung turned it out as a merge of Hawaiian palm-tree shirts, tie-dye, and ’40s-’70s Deco prints, layered into the kind of tailoring you see lanky groups of Korean boys wearing around Seoul Fashion Week.K-pop standards of male fashion-consciousness have upped the ante on dressing well throughout Asia. Wooyoungmi’s long track record in tailoring fits right in with that specific thirst for innovation—Chung’s oversize brown-and-white-checked shorts suit with a matching coat; her elongated jackets with wide fluid pants. The latter silhouette is the trend of the season in Paris menswear, of course. Hawaiian shirts too. That eye for what’s right is applicable internationally.
22 June 2019
The gulf between rich and poor was manifested in the symbolism of the set Katie Chung installed at the Salle Wagram: crash barriers and chandeliers. Wooyoungmi brings a Korean perspective to Paris Fashion Week, but Chung’s angle is that there’s not so much difference between the attitude of kids in her country, and those of Europe or America, as they look at the lifestyles of the wealthy, on social media or elsewhere: “They kind of admire it, but they can’t have it. There’s much more unemployment in Korea than there was 10 years ago.”Some of the boys had scarves wound high up over their faces under baseball caps—an echo of the ominous identity-concealing imagery that has been cropping up this week. “I wanted to show their anger.”Founded by Chung’s fashion-entrepreneur mother Madame Woo, as a brand Wooyoungmi has a strong tailoring capability. The creative director made use of it in checked menswear fabrics, like a windowpane yellow-brown grid-pattern suit with a wrap-over jacket in exactly the type of cut that was being worn outside shows in Seoul Fashion Week last fall. She also channelled grunge in blanket plaids, best in a soft red/cream corduroy.She’d have been more on-point if she’d pushed that side of things—as she did in her recent Bowie-influenced show (tailoring has only become more desirable and cooler since then). The Rue de Vaugiraud logo on some of the knits and the scarves referred to the address where F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Paris in the 1920s. It was an obscure reference, puzzlingly incongruent in today’s populist state of unrest. Still, when it got to the T-shirt slogan “lost generation,” the Jazz Age tag assumed a readable enough meaning in the context of so much discontent. Here’s the thing: Will young men who spend on fashion rather wear their angst in sloganized steetwear, or show defiance of circumstances by making the best of things in a suit? One way or another, that parting of the stylistic genres has been the subject hanging over Paris this week.
21 January 2019
Katie Chung’s second collection as the sole designer of Wooyoungmi was all about “a modernized version of David Bowie’s personal style for the next generation,” she said, adding, “I believe there’s a new iteration of his look happening now.”Chung was smart to steer mostly away from Bowie tropes and focus on androgynous tailoring, bohemian freedom (especially with some chunky-heeled boots) and a nostalgic romance that wasn’t so much vintage-y as it was looking at the ’80s through a clean and current prism. (Okay, extended shirt collars are a hard sell, but there were strong parts otherwise.) Included in this reel: a double-breasted cropped blazer in Prince of Wales check, with black extended buttoning up the sleeves.Chung also had great paneled skinny jeans, iridescent outerwear, disco-silvery shorts, and belts with the letters “WYM” flipped this way and that. All of it together was slightly over-varied, but that wasn’t a huge detraction. Plus, Chung smartly found room to sneak in a little glam in the end: rhinestone crystal choker necklaces. Like 1987 in 2018, or vice versa. Round and round we go.
23 June 2018
This was Katie Chung’s first collection as sole creative in charge following her mother Woo Young Mi’s decision to step back from the brand she founded in 2002. Backstage, Chung seemed extremely mellow. “It’s about a new bohemian mood,” she said of her collection. “There are sports details and vintage elements and classic Wooyoungmi elegance and influences from streetwear too . . . it doesn’t make sense, but I think that is what is really happening now.”Oversize suiting, or sometimes jackets atop the high-cut leather pants that ran through this collection, was layered over shirting with hyper-emphasized collars or camp collars. There was a lot of aggressive mishmash-ery: A track top came tucked into those leather pants over a white pair of the steel-toed Chelsea boots that caused the models plenty of pause for thought as they turned on the parquet. A nicely roughed-up carpet jacquard hoodie with decorative swirls swiped from some old artwork was worn above two-tone nylon track pants, and more of those slippery boots. Denim stitched with decorative wavey lines of cotton, then bleached, looked gently distinctive. Standout outerwear included a super-huggable reverse shaggy shearling with an oversize collar and a white oversize woolen shirt-coat. Chung’s instinct to confront different genres in the same look was interesting, and the collection was liberally peppered with twists of unusual detail.
20 January 2018
A lot of labels appropriate skateboarding style but do it crassly and badly: lame. But before a collection whose notes said it was inspired by the movieLords of Dogtown, Katie Chung of Wooyoungmi not only showed an understanding of skating as an athletic art form, she also revealed that she skates—and surfs—herself. So props.The Carhartt-esque pants with zippered leg details, the elevated workwear—dream Dickies—in olive and check, and the very vaguely Vision Street Wear shoes did feel somewhat skatey, although from an era that postdated the Z-Boys and was moreBan This—when the ’80s turned into the ’90s, deck shapes changed, and people stopped using rails. This collection, though, was not an attempt to make skatewear, but elevated luxury menswear for those with an aesthetic kinship to the artistry of skateboarding. The house’s supersized suiting was present and correct, as reliable as a set of Gullwings. There were some left-field sweats and knits that were sleeveless on the right and attached under the arm by button. A recurring paisley teardrop motif—which was quite Venice Beach–bandana gnarly—appeared embroidered on a hoodie, shorts, shirting, and frayedly inlaid into denim. The ties rang false—you can’t put ties into a skate-inspired collection, however vague the inspiration. And there was a weird styling tic—at least that’s what it looked like—that saw outerwear buttoned incorrectly and hid the proper line of the garment. But these were minor snarls.
24 June 2017
Anyone who visited the exhibition on Oscar Wilde at the Petit Palais before it ended last week likely spent a few extra moments absorbing the details of Napoléon Sarony’s famous portrait session with the writer from 1882. Arguably, this was Wilde at peak beauty. Wooyoungmi’s Madame Woo and Katie Chung said those images lingered in their head, leaving them convinced that the 21st-century artist/intellectual is no less preoccupied with fashion’s fine details. Now, however, he takes his style cues from the street.To that end, the mother and daughter designers created clothes for a young aesthete who aims to look put-together yet takes pride in looking a tad undone. Fashion for fashion’s sake, or something like that. They accomplished this convincingly with jogging pants in velvet and hoodies under slightly oversize topcoats to emphasize the inescapable evolution from formal to sport. They also proposed several updated versions of a poet’s blouse; one in particular featured a removable ruffle placket that, as the show’s styling demonstrated, can be staggered to trail below the shirt hem, or tacked up on itself like a neckpiece. If trousers in crinkled corduroy and warped, oversize sweaters suggested a shabby existence, the refined suiting fabrics and handsome slippers wouldn’t fool anyone. These were hardly starving artists.But were they authentic ones? Integrated collars atop collars and pajama bottoms extending below cropped pants belied the guy who tries hard not to look as though he tried hard. Conversely, the spontaneous contrast of a peignoir coat with dressy joggers would suit an aspiring flaneur—or flaneuse. Because despite the boxy shapes and slouched pants, an unmistakable feminine touch resulted in the crossover appeal of Look 20 with its beautiful bell-sleeved coat. Of course, it was Wilde who famously noted, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” But he was a maximalist, and these women are skilled designers.
21 January 2017
Backstage,Madame Woo and Katie Chungsaid that they had been reflecting on the work of Sol LeWitt for a while before deciding to proceed with a collection dedicated to his wall drawings. Purists questioning the appropriateness of sizing down his large-scaleLoopy Doopylines to a pair of shorts should rest assured that the designers showed respect. Indeed, the pattern coexisted within a spectrum of looks that balanced studied with experimental. Pants were high-waisted and extra swishy, allowing the lines to sway in a way that was never possible in two dimensions. Will men buy into the style—arguably the most repeated statement in the lineup—beyond the concept? Those who have an advanced sense of proportion just might. Overskirts in suit fabric, extra-long fluted sleeves, and sartorial shorts over pants warranted another question: Is this mother-daughter duo pushing their masculine ideal further towards womenswear? As a fallback, they made sure to address standard fare in a non-standard way; gingham as knitwear, a blouson in acidic olive satin, and seersucker in a darkened stripe.Madame Woo referred to their approach this season as “organized chaos,” and the deliberately misaligned shirts would certainly qualify. But the graphic windowpane motif and precise pattern blocking belied no lack of control; they possessed a level of mathematical confidence that LeWitt would have likely loved.
25 June 2016
With gender fluidity coursing through this men’s fashion season, Wooyoungmi’s contribution felt less like a declarative stance than a metaphoric gesture, as if Madame Woo and Katie Chung were conducting it through the clothes. It swished around the paneled vents up the fronts of pants and filled the ballooned back of a blouson. According to Chung, the impulse was personal, originating at their family garden outside Seoul; the more they reflected on the variety of natural elements, the more they considered their garden genderless. On the runway, this interpretation of nature appeared highly distilled, so that rotated collars and color incrustations in coats hinted at the fold of a leaf, or the curve of an arum lily. Extra-long cuffs were unmistakably petal-shaped.But it doesn’t much matter if you made the connection; you were likely too focused on figuring out how this wardrobe of unpretentious design hovered between form and fluidity. One theory: Women creating menswear inevitably perceive the body differently. All those roomy coat sleeves could have been boxy; but no, they were rounded. Not once were the trousers taut. So, naturally, the introduction of a women’s capsule—primarily comprised of men’s pieces—seemed like a seed planted long ago. Both male and female models wore looks featuring handcrafted swirling floral embroidery and beaded flower patches. A garden is shared space.
23 January 2016
"We've been imagining the future for so long, but now we're living it," creative director Katie Chung said after the Wooyoungmi show. "There is no reason to fantasize about silver space suits and crazy shapes: My idea of the future is about function, about keeping the traditional beauty of the dress while changing the fabrics." A giant makeshift moon was sitting right in the middle of today's runway, the futuristic tingle of the setup highlighted by the blatant contrast with the very old-school Parisian splendor of the venue, the Salon Imperial at the Intercontinental Hotel. The melancholic score, composed by Stu Sibley, made the rest: Wooyoungmi's take on futurism was all about nostalgia of what's to happen, not excitement for the unknown.The collection, rather aptly, was a precise lineup of well-defined shapes. The duster coat, the lean suit, and the blouson were offered in endless variations of washes and in a myriad of crinkled fabrics, not a print in sight. Colors were pale and organic, growing in intensity from dusty gray to deep charcoal. It all oozed an air of assured calm and pensive detachment, while fabric innovation made sure clothes could be lived in and used intensely. On a sidenote, things got a bit repetitive quite soon. A shorter show would have made the message more effective.
27 June 2015
Mother-daughter relationships can be tricky—even more so when business is involved. But not in the case of Woo Young Mi and Katie Chung, the joint creative directors at Wooyoungmi, whose different personalities perfectly interlock in a shared idea of nonchalant elegance. That's the essence of the label, should you be looking for a formula.Chung, who grew up inside the family enterprise, learning about cloth and seam way before she started talking, finally joined her mother last year. Her contribution has been subtle yet palpable, making the Wooyoungmi world smoother and a little more cocooning. "She likes soft things; I like hard things," Madame Woo said after today's show. The collection balanced the two opposite forces in an elongated silhouette of intense textures and remarkable lightness, with a persistent urban aftertaste.The narrative behind it all was admittedly a tad vague. "After our intense workdays, we usually sit in a café and look at people coming back home after work, not caring anymore about what they wear," explained Chung. "We thought it was interesting to capture that carelessness in our clothes." There was nothing remotely careless, though, about the loose coats, unstructured blazers, and droopy trousers worn with massive sneakers with rubber cap-toes. The precision of the cuts, however, kept getting overwhelmed by the oversize volumes and the supple yet sturdy materials. Felt, a favorite fabric, was prominently featured, pressed and hammered to make it as weightless as possible. Minimalist and quite spare in design, Wooyoungmi relies primarily on innovative fabric research.While things went well on top—coats were the charmers—bottoms looked a tad ill-fitting, all low crotches and extra-long hems that gave a saggy instead of nonchalant air. Apart from that, it all worked, even though a tighter edit would have helped. Conciseness is key.
24 January 2015
If Woo Young Mi looks looser, there's a good reason for it. The Korean designer has recently named her 28-year-old daughter, Katie Chung, joint creative director. Although Chung, a graduate of Central Saint Martins, has been involved with Wooyoungmi since she was a teenager, Spring marks the first official collection of the mother-daughter creative partnership. "The biggest difference between us is that she likes hard [lines] and I like soft," said Chung. "She's a great technician, a great artist. But I wanted to loosen this guy up." Through her translator, her mother added, "We're different, but we have the same DNA, so there's synergy. She's so creative, she brings new energy [to the brand]."More than a specific theme, this season was about an attitude. Chung described it as "chillax." "He might be a curator or a working artist," she explained. "His lifestyle is his art." That mind-set came through in relaxed tailoring and sportswear with bonded fabrics and collaged textures as well as in silhouettes like loose drawstring chinos paired with deconstructed jackets or a crumpled parka. Op and Pop Art inspirations lifted from the works of kinetic artist Carlos Cruz-Diez and Roy Lichtenstein cropped up on mesh-veiled prints and dotted motifs. A subdued palette of white, black, gray, and blue got jazzed up with the occasional shot of yellow. In a fortuitous piece of symmetry, the models were styled to look as if they had just been caught in the downpour outside—in that context the rumpled windbreakers and roomy trench looked all the more compelling, but only the truly intrepid will go ahead and pair those with the haute riff on white Crocs. Speaking of accessories, Wooyoungmi's new black bucket bag has plenty of crossover appeal, as well as a sleek new space to call home, on the Rue Saint-Claude in the Marais.
27 June 2014