Seoul Fashion Week and Frieze Seoul come together for the first time this week. At the center of this Venn diagram is We11done, which hosted its debut show today at K-Pop Square in Coex, which also hosts Frieze.
Only it wasn’t a debut, at least not exactly. We11done had its first runway show during the Fall 2020 menswear season in Paris. Then came the pandemic, a series of internal restructurings and an eventual soft but decisive relaunch of the label. We11done has been catching up in recent seasons, but now they are all done.
“I feel like this is our first show,” says brand manager Youngjin Kim, Zooming from their studio in Seoul, “we don’t even remember what it was like before 2020.” We11done has not always aligned itself with the South Korean fashion scene, showing their collections in Paris and placing themselves outside the mainstream definition of Korean fashion. The decision to stage their comeback show in Seoul was a sharp one: “Everyone is watching Korea right now,” Kim said, nodding to the public interest in K-Pop and the way Western brands have tried to capitalize on it by organizing shows. to organize. in the country (Gucci, Louis Vuitton) or by adopting its stars as ambassadors (Bottega Veneta, Dior, Saint Laurent, Celine). “We decided to do a show here because it’s our hometown,” she said. “It’s the right time for us to do a show and it felt good to do it here.”
‘Home’ was the key word here. The collection, as Kim described it, celebrated their childhood in Korea with interpretations of their memories built into the clothes. Creative director Jessica Jung, who builds her collections each season based on an art reference, focused this time on the work of artist Do Ho Suh. “He is known for creating architectural pieces that turn memories into spaces,” said Kim, “we want to turn memories into clothes.”
Think of the mind as an empty space populated by passing memories. Here it took the form of an empty gallery as the show’s catwalk, with reminders of the artwork in the form of clothing (this artistic sensibility is where the Frisian of it all played to their advantage). There was a stiff, mottled dress modeled after a blanket and draped around the body as you would as a child, and a linoleum wood printed floor (“like the one in a family room”) that was used as a print on jersey as well as on boxy tops and a pleated circle skirt with no waistband – “like when you made pleats as a kid.” A series of optically white loose items in wrinkled fabric was playfully inventive. They had inserted paper between their cotton outer layer and their lining, each fold in the material adding texture to the piece. The rest of the lineup consisted of curvaceous but flattened jeans and knits. This We11done series had a paper doll quality to it that made it charming, if not slightly obtuse. It’s not easy to imagine these pieces off the runway, but that’s what makes them special. Niche is a good place to be – just ask the many celebrities in attendance, including rapper G-Dragon, influencer Irene Kim and model Lee Soo-hyuk.
“It’s a celebration of the mix of something real and something that will disappear, familiar things turning into memories or disappearing,” Kim said of a handful of beautiful boxy trompe-l’oeil jackets and skirts with embossed details: a flower, pockets, a tie, a belt. “Each piece holds a memory,” she added, but like memories, these items didn’t always present themselves in their truest form. Their proportions seemed as if they had been reimagined by a child: a little off and a little naive. As we age and reminisce, we are bound to misremember a few details. But that’s the charm of commemoration: nothing beats our own version of the story.
