In recent years, Eudon Choi has approached his pre-fall and resort collections as palate cleansers. His tendency has been to present (at least at first glance) a more stripped-down offering of his chameleonic garments: layered knits, jackets with removable panels and sleeves, or trousers with inventive closures and belts, to name just a few examples. .
His latest collection combined this off-season commercial rigor with his instinct for considered creative reference; for the latter, he looked to the work of Lee Ufan, the influential Korean artist who was a foundational member of the Mono-ha movement that emerged from postwar Japan as a kind of earthy, philosophical cousin of art poora. Choi visited a major Ufan exhibition when he visited Seoul, where he first trained as a menswear designer last spring, and also mentions the contemporary art boom in Korea (most recently buoyed by the introduction of the Frieze Art Fair in Seoul) as particularly inspiring. “It encouraged me to focus on the materials I was using,” Choi said. “To reduce things to their essence.”
In addition to a lot of Choi’s classics—slant-sleeved blouses with button-fastened panels, the seedy draping of his bias-cut shirt dresses, ribbed knits—there were some new, standout pieces in the mix. The first look, consisting of an asymmetrical 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 blue 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 another touch of artistic flair, while stately wool tailored coats and luxuriously soft knit tanks looked ready to fly off the shelves. Once again, Choi offered a fully realized wardrobe of smart, grown-up clothing for his following of smart, grown-up women.
