Rokh (Q7883)
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Rokh is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Rokh |
Rokh is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
2018
founder and designer
“The inspiration stemmed entirely from the work done at our atelier’s table,” said Rok Hwang backstage. “It was about exploring the possibilities with fabric—how we could manipulate it, whether a strip or a thread, and seeing where it would lead us.” This season, rather than just deconstructing and assembling to achieve his typical volumetric, shape-shifting configurations, Hwang concentrated on craft and handmade processes. It gave the handsome collection a more romantic flair, lighter and softer, while keeping an inventive sartorial edge.Hwang said that his team found joy in experimenting with techniques and dyes, and that sense of levity played out throughout the collection. Delicate strips of recycled chiffon and leftover ribbons were meticulously crafted into handmade rosettes, dyed a soft pale hue with organic tea and arranged into a blooming, cocoon-like shape; they also adorned the slender jacket of a sharply tailored men’s black suit. Shirring and ruching added dimension to billowy blouse-capes in mousseline, layered over finely studded wide-leg denim, or shaped the gently curved half-moon panniers of an off-white corset paired with draped slouchy trousers. Whirls of cascading pleated ruffles, light shirred half-frocks arranged asymmetrically in an artful state of draped collapse, and short peplum crinolines bursting from tank tops conjured an edgy, romantic vibe. Despite all the poetry and whimsy, Hwang’s approach is actually rather realistic—his collaboration with H&M in April sold out in no time.
1 October 2024
Rok Hwang gave vent to his romantic tendencies while he was working on fall in his studio in Seoul. “I think since last season I've been exploring something that was a little bit more quiet. Sitting draping and playing around with patterns in my studio, deciding what I like, and being a little more Zen.”Hwang has always been a latter-day deconstructionist, a chopper-up of trenches, suits, and corsetry whose themes have ranged around office dressing, cocktail-wear, and his memories of the 1990s and 2000s in Texas and London. This time, his instincts led him to a more free-wheeling kind of collage of disparate elements—a renaissance mannerist painting of a male angel, which he had reproduced in a tapestry and on prints, long sheepskin-lookalike coats, raw-edged tailoring, fragments of Victoriana, and military fatigues. It was also the first Rokh show that included so many men’s looks.Though they work continents apart, Hwang’s collection bore a few odd similarities to Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe. Toward the end of the show, there was a swagged antique floral dévoré print dress creating an interesting volume, but paired with gray, fairly ordinary seeming coordinates. Anderson’s point was to look at the collections of the wealthy, which Hwang’s tapestry would also fit. Disconcertingly, however, when it came, he draped the fabric over the head and body of a model, making holes for the eyes.Hwang didn’t describe his intentions, except to say obliquely how much he enjoys seeing people in the street wearing Rokh. “And they all look different from each other, and different from the way I’ve shown it. People love to adapt what I do.”His experimentation doesn’t always make for an easily-understood narrative or silhouettes, although they were beautiful when he concentrated on draping a rose-bud printed ‘granny’s bed-quilt’ as a doubled-up cocoon coat, wrapping and knotting creamy lace layers over a traily Victoriana petticoat, and covering coats with naive garlands of crocheted flowers. But it’s healthy for designers to allow themselves a creative outlet—as Demna put it this week, “creativity is the new luxury.”
5 March 2024
Amongst the feverish hurry of Paris fashion week, Rok Hwang cast a compelling, almost Film Noir atmosphere over his spring show. Spotlit from above, with jazz on the soundtrack, his collection created a small oasis of calm—the better to show his mid-2020s vision of what modern elegance means to his generation.“It’s a world I want to live in—sophisticated but a bit edgy, avant-garde,” he said backstage, gesturing to a mood board that also took in menswear for the first time.The down-lighting picked out the complexities of the draped, twisted, and cut-away tailoring—and the bondage-y trench coat straps—he’s established as the signifiers of his increasingly popular Rokh brand. His opening black jacket—literally carved open in the torso, to reveal an integral bra—was reprised again in an English country jacket form later. Looking back, this same jacket-pattern opened his spring 2023 show. Its recurrence has to be in response to what his customer-base is relating to, as part of the normalization of the post-pandemic wave of ‘naked’ dressing.His is an evolved and elaborated style, now expertly dissected and reconfigured from classic building-blocks—the trench, the tailored suit, military uniform—intersected with dresses and lingerie. It’s somehow simultaneously pulled-together while almost brinking on falling apart; a highly considered top-to-toe proposition that also appears a bit louchely casual. “It’s a full wardrobe for work but something that’s sort of elevated, but also fun and twisted too,” Hwang said. This time, there were glamorous evening things wrapped into the lineup; halter necked dresses suspended on chains, one of them outlined in white crochet lace.Hwang said he had a narrative holding all of it together: thinking about his aspirations as a student. “It’s a little bit of my youth, where my passion started—how I wanted to be a student at Central Saint Martins. That’s all I dreamed of,” he said. “A lot of things came together, but I wanted to sort of provoke that emotion, of being an art student. A little bit of a London attitude.”A Korean who spent much of his childhood in the USA, Hwang’s dream did indeed come true—he took both his BA and MA at Central Saint Martins, graduated in 2010 (in the same class as Simone Rocha), and was immediately snapped up by Phoebe Philo, when she was planning her post-Chloé debut at Celine.The men’s collection is a development by popular demand. “We’ve been quiet about it, but we’re selling to 133 stores globally.
It’s been growing quite a lot, and there have been lots of requests coming for menswear.”Every season, it’s a fuller Rokh picture (with squashy pouch bags for both men and women, too). No, he doesn’t shout much about it, but the loyal fans he’s gathering around him, as well as the attitude of the Rokh look put him on the same sort of generational wavelength as Jacquemus. Coming from a different place, yes, but going far.
10 October 2023
Are you back full time in the office? To Rok Hwang’s mind, his model workforce was wearing “office essentials.” What!? Only half-dressed? As they walked around the concrete floor of the Garage Amelot, they ended up play-acting ‘working,’ sitting at desks, clustering around photocopiers, pretending to make important calls on land-lines, and peering into the kind of computer terminals not seen since the millennium.Well, if the discussion around sober uniforms and tailoring has been one of the hot topics this Paris Fashion Week, it looks as though Hwang is a bit of a dissenter from office rules. His collection was sort of half-in with all the tailoring and classic-ish coats, and then again, very much half-out. What with all the bras, black leather bustiers and lingerie liberally sprinkled within, under and upon his fall lineup, it appears, shall we say, that he’s not 100 percent bought into the idea of corporate dress codes.But in fact the reason the clothes looked like that is about a different way of working—his own. “I was inspired to call it ‘Office Essentials’ because when I thought about it, where I am, what I do in life, I’m in fact a really boring person,” said Hwang. “I just spend my whole life in the office, pattern-cutting and draping. Sometimes we say ‘the atelier,’ to make it sound posher, but it’s really an office.”That sheds a different light on the collection, as a sort of diary of Hwang’s design process. The way he folds over waistbands, cuts shirts to stay off one shoulder, gives the illusion of doubled jeans reads as detailed and complex work—sometimes too complicated. That said, ‘gestural’ fashion is becoming a bit of a term du jour (see Jonathan Anderson), and the urge to build skew-whiff, falling down, glitched design into our clothes may be one of the markers of our weird off-kilter times.
6 March 2023
Rok Hwang of Rokh titled his spring collection “The Irrational View.” Backstage before the show, Hwang was relating where the name came from. Apparently, it was all down to him thinking about the conflict that designers feel when they consider the expectations of their role, as in making things which have an inner logic, that are fit for purpose (the rational part) versus the irrational part (this is where the fun kicks in), as in the longing to express all those sublimated desires and urges to create things which exist in the realms of pure imagination, practicality and functionality be damned. Flicking through the show notes later there was apparently also some dialogue between this rational/irrational thesis and the show’s set design, curved configurations of chairs at a dance theater near the Trocadero. (A stunning view of the Eiffel Tower also thrown in gratis, btw.)I didn’t entirely understand that latter bit about the set. (Sorry, Rok!) But what I do understand is that when Hwang is firing on all cylinders, he creates smart, inventive clothes which, rational or irrational, make for great fashion. By now, if you’ve been following his work at all, you’ll know he loves to work his way through wardrobe archetypes—the blazer, the shirt, the trench, et al—transforming them this way and that with his imaginative construction experiments.Hwang revisited the trench for spring, using it as the basis for his tailoring experiments, cutting it into a high-waisted skirt, cinched and buckled, worn with a bra top, or deconstructed into a cropped jacket, the bottom half now a skirt made up of panels cut on the bias, exposing a good expanse of leg on one side, and trailing the floor on the other. (Paris, it has to be said, is enraptured with this look; in the most extreme examples, seen on other designers’ runways, nothing will say spring 2023 like having one knee brazenly flaunting itself, the other having taken a season-long sabbatical by hiding behind fabric, a sartorial vow of silence.)Interestingly (and another little narrative of note from Paris these past days) this was another spring collection heavy on, well, heavier things. It was all part, Hwang said, of thinking about those earlier deliveries, when the sun, like that knee, might need quite a bit of coaxing to come out.
These were some of the best pieces here: A fantastic cuddly toy of a fur, made up of upcycled panels of the faux fluffy stuff, or a really rather chic coat, which had been quilted inside, so that the pattern of the padding ‘bled’ through to the surface; it was quietly intriguing and effective both from a practical and decorative point of view.Maybe that’s what Hwang meant when he was talking about the rational and the irrational. If so, here’s another good example: Those undulating bands on his skirts, which could be fastened or unfastened via a series of hook and eye fastenings. All done up, those hooks make for an elegantly graphic embellishment. But start unhooking, letting the panel fall to reveal the body underneath. Well, then you’re in the realms of freeing your imagination as much as the designer who created the skirt you’d be wearing.
3 October 2022
Rok Hwang’s American backstory surfaces in his work from time to time—and this was one of those seasons when he thought about being brought up in Texas, after his dad’s work took the family there from South Korea. “I’ve always been surrounded by strong women, like my mother and my sister, who wanted to be a cheerleader at school,” said Hwang.Judging by the looks he devised, there must have been punk girls, scouts and sporty girls to look up to as well. Taking a swerve away from the all-out glamour of last season, he concentrated largely on tailoring, multi-strapped and buckled up; sometimes asymmetrically peeled back and folded over at the waist.There was a lot going on besides the big blow-outs which bounced on the shoulders of the Varsity jacketed cheerleader girls. Hwang likes to layer: skirts over trousers, bustier dresses over shirts and ties; and then throw a crystal net over the lot for evening.There was certainly much more daywear—his last collection, completely based on cocktail and streamlined gowns, had barely any. Maybe that’s what made Hwang revert to and elaborate on his signature tailoring—somewhat over complicatedly—this season. Still, there were evening moments which stood out this time. Three prom dresses, essentially. One of them, in cream, was short in front with a trail in back. The girl was wearing a spiky metal Statue of Liberty Alice band and sneakers. Now, that’s a look that could do a turn on the steps at the Met Gala in May.
5 March 2022
Rok Hwang’s spring collection was a revelation. Not because he was unknown—he’d captured Paris’s attention before the pandemic began—but because of its vibe, which was glamorous, flirtatious, and irresistibly fun. Remember all that? There was much midriff on display and large helpings of shiny PVC and ostrich feathers.In turn, Hwang’s pre-season collection is a showcase for his daywear. Tailoring takes the lead. Hwang distinguishes his jackets by adding a peplum to just one hip, or doubling up the lapels to create a layered look, or cutting them with a removable sleeve shrug so a jacket can get extra mileage as a vest. Hwang also offers the shrug separately and reports that it sells well, which is to say that fun is not just an after-hours occupation here, but rather quite the opposite. Still riding the high of his spring runway, he’s given this lineup a real sense of play. See the fisherman knit pants and bra tops, see the teddy bear coat and paisley printed fleece, see the clingy knits with peekaboo details of the sort he used on the catwalk. Next month, Hwang will be back in Paris with his fall collection, and anyone looking for a mood lifter should request a ticket.
1 February 2022
Back in Paris again, in full daylight, the unmistakably talented Rok Hwang finally got his chance to shine brilliantly. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, here he was going head-on for glamour. Not any of your sexed-up, ironic-pastiche-y glam. This was full-on gorgeously classy glamour, a rewriting of the black cocktail dress, vivid opera gloves and all, for a new generation.In a world full of doubt about the direction of fashion, here was a totally unexpected, sparkling antidote, an upside-down show that started—boom—with a brilliant passage of evening wear. “Embracing femininity, and also a kind of youthful glamour, is the message that I wanted to present. So it has kind of youthful energy,” Hwang was saying backstage.That took guts, an amazing instinct for timing, and tons of skill. “I really wanted to work on the woman’s body and to create something that is really elegant and beautiful,” he said. “That was kind of the study. I challenged myself artistically to create something that is more fun.”More fun is definitely what young women will have when going out in a fitted black dress with falling-off-the-shoulder straps, a bra-top with a wrapped skirt, or a sheath dress with a side slit up to here. And perhaps, if really in the mood for disturbing the norm, it could be a strapless prom dress, trailing a train—in black PVC.Hwang said that he always goes “back to my Central Saint Martins roots” to center himself. Maybe that’s why he was thinking a bit about London clubs of the early noughties, where avant-garde competitive dressing up really was a thing. Or maybe it was the thought of the words of late professor Louise Wilson, to whom Hwang was a favorite, who was always pushing people to be more themselves. To own it. To stick by what you believe.Hwang has had a while to discover what that means. His cuts, with all their skilled asymmetry, folded and peeled-back techniques and chicly deconstructed ways of tailoring already have an outsize fan-base. During lockdown times—despite everything—that brought his brand customers and insider fashion fans.So, in lots of ways, this collection didn’t come out of the blue. People were waiting for what he’d do. But still—even without mentioning the daywear, which will continue to please his market—the great shock of the new glamour in Rokh’s evening wear is the kind that’s going to wake fashion up.
30 September 2021
It could be the Audible recording ofMike Nichols: A LifeI’m listening to, but looking at the new Rokh collection, I was reminded of the director’s highly rewatchable filmWorking Girland the commuter suits and sneakers worn by its star Melanie Griffith. By 1988, when the movie came out, second-wave feminism had ushered in a new generation of working women like Griffith’s Tess McGill, and climbing the corporate ladder sometimes required comfortable shoes. Three decades later, we’re wearing sneakers with just about everything—deconstructed suits and party dresses alike—though that probably says less about patriarchal power structures than it does about how hard we all work these days.Rok Hwang is adding sneakers to his Rokh repertoire expressly because he’s seen so many of his clients wearing his suits and other dressed-up items that way. They look surprisingly right with an athletic dress built from a sleek tank-top bodice and a full skirt that filled up with air like a parachute when the model wearing it jumped for her look-book picture. Mixing unexpected elements is a recurring motif in Hwang’s work. Here, a biker jersey and a pin-tucked tulle skirt was the strangest combination but not so unlikely as to be improbable. As radical as his slashing and cutting can sometimes be, Hwang is grounded in reality, and he has an eye for the way young women are creating outfits out of clothes that formerly didn’t go together.The combo of biker jersey and the pin-tucked tulle was in service of what he said was his larger goal this season, which came about through the fallout of the pandemic: He wanted to put freedom and movement at the center of his work. It came across in lower-key ways too: via the knee-high split seams on trousers, the little shrugs he constructed out of sporty windbreaker material, and the puff-sleeve tops that were completely backless save for the bow holding them on.Hwang’s other instinct was to add crafty touches to his clothes, like lines from a pulp-fiction novel that he hand-stitched onto wispy lingerie tops and dresses. In the immortal words of Tess McGill, “I have a head for business and a bod for sin—is there anything wrong with that?” Us girls, we’re all just trying to make it, and after the year we’ve had, we might as well have some fun in the process.
21 June 2021
It’s a shame no one was there to see the extensive show that Rok Hwang put on behind the closed doors of a former London brewery, because the deconstructed/reconstructed elegance of it hit a nerve. There’s a small bunch of designers who are somehow managing to fold the dissonance of our times into their work, and Hwang is one of them.A dark kind of glamour seemed to be circulating in the foggy atmosphere in his fall video. There were girls wearing precisely sliced-away bodices and waisted, peeled-back tailoring. A black slip dress had a deep silver fringe spiraling diagonally around it; a lace corset was paired with a terrifically-cut masculine pair of trousers with the lining folded over at the top. A tiny black dress walked out, suspended from metal chain-link straps.It was almost like something from an underground nightclub in the ’90s, but with a coolly accomplished polish about it. “I actually felt very strongly about studying a lot about the ’90s this season,” he reflected on a Zoom call from his London studio. “Somehow, I felt it was very connected and very coherent to now. I think there’s not much of a reason behind it, but I think it’s my instinct.”Those who’ve been following Hwang’s shows in Paris— he was a recipient of an LVMH prize a couple of years back—will recognize it as a progression of the style he’s been building on. He called this season’s collection Omniverse. “It’s kind of a continuous story,” he said, “because my identity is actually coming from my multicultural background. And I wanted to kind of explore the randomness of the encounters I’ve had.”Hwang is a South Korean who grew up in Austin, Texas, and then went to London to study at Central Saint Martins. Thrown on his own resources during lockdown, he said he’d started thinking about his college days. “I remember meeting this guy on the first day of school who was wearing a rubber top and a lace skirt and a really strange, enormous, kind of like sneaker,” he laughs. “I was kind of in a culture shock, but I wanted to be his friend.”Perhaps that goes a way to understanding why the vaguely fetishy undercurrent of buckled straps and leather bras crops up in Hwang’s aesthetic, but it’s also filtered through a practice that was honed in his early days of working for Phoebe Philo, who hired him when she was embarking on her first years at Celine. “I was very blessed to join the house and see her amazing approach.
It was a spectacular time, seeing her natural taste, well as her understanding of the woman. She’d wear the clothes herself, and then it was all about asking: is this for a woman or not?” he remembers. “That affected me a lot. So now when I’m designing things, I always ask my wife and my team to kind of wear it, and then just kind of share their opinion, to try to give it the best form possible.”Having the time to develop ideas over the past year made him want to refine his radical cutting techniques, and reinvestigate suiting for women. It runs the gamut between great coats and lingerie details, culminating in hand-made deconstructed lace dresses worn with shredded jeans. “Something that is very precious, and to contrast that with something that is really worn and something that is really easy and casual.” Yes, there are definite echoes of Martin Margiela’s 1991 collection in that, but for a new generation, the chance to go there is resonating as a fresh experience.During the pandemic, Hwang says the response to his work has only been growing. “ We’ve actually increased our distribution. We’re lucky that many items we delivered have all sold out, and we’ve been able to restock them.” Luck? Well, not really. What Hwang’s brand has is creativity, professionalism, and that X factor of relevance to the times we’re living in. Quietly, from the margins of fashion, he’s becoming an indie success.
7 March 2021