Everything at the Riviera, where Seoul Fashion Week had arranged accommodations for a few press and buyers was tinged by stale tobacco smoke, yet the concierge's advice was unfortunately clear-sighted...
“No one can ever find a place with the address,” replied the concierge at the Hotel Riviera’s help desk when I showed him a printout for a gallery that I wanted to visit. “It is impossible. There are no directions,” he assured me. Everything at the Riviera, where Seoul Fashion Week had arranged accommodations for a few press and buyers was tinged by stale tobacco smoke, yet the concierge’s advice was unfortunately clear-sighted. This was my fourth season in Seoul and it proved the most directionless to date.
Taxi-drivers, concierges and even the organisers of Seoul Fashion Week which took place at the end of March were lost. Competing government sponsors and private firms battle for the business of organising Seoul Fashion Week, yet the glitches remain entrenched. Friendly, overwhelmed yet officious ushers hired from general tourist organisations with no idea of who belonged where or the necessary hierarchy among significant press, random small-fish and stragglers. Blonde hair often trumped solid international credentials in the scramble for a front-row seat. And, unfortunately for the designers, the presence of hordes of giggling students who had paid $7 to attend the shows meant that Setec, a soulless putty-colored conference centre with the charm of a government bureaucratic office, remained the setting for the shows in the main Seoul Collection, while the small but flattering and sophisticated Kring Art Centre only hosted the handful of Generation Next shows during the evenings on three nights.
Many of the designers seemed ready to follow directions all too closely, but the inspiration was not their own. There were ill-executed replicas of Japanese deconstruction, and universal nightclub gear with a few standard hipster looks, all towing the well-worn outlines for each look. “It is just like they slavishly followed the same trend-reports,” remarked Brylie Fowler, the editor of the British-based Plastique magazine.
However, as often happens, when you are wandering lost, you can stumble upon unexpected treasures – and there is genuine talent in Seoul that compensates for the chaos and disappointments.
At Kring, the popular Johnny Hates Jazz collection was cool and well-cut. Sena Yoon’s sweet, flowing and feminine SoftCore collection was fun and frisky. Jin Te Ok, a grande dame on the Seoul scene, overcame the drab Setec setting with a sophisticated video presentation that followed the models as they walked a simple catwalk in her elegant black, white and scarlet lace and fur collection. Ranji Ye’s outstanding, intellectual and sensitive The Centaur line was conspicuously absent from the schedule, but Ye’s studio offered insights into Seoul’s truly innovative art and fashion scene.
Yet the season’s strongest show was the only one whose designer had the initiative to organise off-site. Jain Song started out as one of the young experimental designers showing her sculptural but casual collections with the Generation Next and Daily Projects programs. This season, she presented a collection of tailored trench-coats, dresses, trouser suits and white shirts in an earthy but urban-friendly palette consisting of seaweed, tan, black and white to invited press and guests in the intimate, bright white gallery space of the F&F corporate head-quarters. Jain Song also asserted her strong character by rejecting the otherwise ubiquitous fur trend and only using cruelty-free materials. By asserting her convictions and finding an alternative space to show, Jain Song proved herself a real trail-blazer whose example can lead Seoul’s other excellent designers to find their own directions forward.
Ana Finel Honigman is a Berlin-based critic, curator, PhD candidate at Oxford University and lecturer at NYU. She writes regularly on contemporary art and fashion for Artforum.com, ashadedviewonfashion.com, Interview.com, the New YorkTimes, Style.com, V, British Vogue and many other publications
