In a quiet neighbourhood within Seoul’s Gangnam district, an area that hasn’t yet fully recovered from the pandemic, is a stripped-back boutique in an old, off-white apartment building. It’s South Korean fashion label HYEIN SEO’s first brick-and-mortar store. Inside, behind the scenes footage of their latest campaign — Japanese photographer Monika Mogi shooting model Kiko Mizuhara on a rocky beach — is projected onto a wall. Just days earlier, a warm evening in early 2023 on the eve of the brand’s 10th anniversary, founders of famous streetwear brands, independent musicians, stylists, photographers and artists gathered on the store’s off-the-beaten-path corner to celebrate its opening.
Since they first showed at NYFW for AW14, HYEIN SEO has won the Samsung Fashion & Design Fund, been stocked by the likes of SSENSE and Machine-A, and dressed artists including Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna and NewJeans. Unlike the early days, when designer Hyein Seo and CEO Jinho Lee regularly travelled back and forth between Seoul and Antwerp – they studied together at the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Arts – the duo are now firmly settled in the South Korean capital, surrounded by a strong community of local creatives and supporters.
Visiting the store in the days after opening, we find Hyein, long-haired and dressed all in black, sitting at a table reading Dans La Ville Invisible by French history scholar François Bon. A thick HYEIN SEO photo book of black-and-white images is on display nearby: 800 pages documenting the brand so far – both a retrospective and an archive of the brand’s evolution. Fittingly, the new release also served as an invitation to the aforementioned opening. Rather than an elaborate narrative, the book is more of an intimate illustration of the creation process; the connection between brand and collection, clothes and people. “The more perfect the outcome, the more painful it likely was for the creators,” the designer says of building a collection. “So it became important for me to enjoy it as much as possible. I’m starting to realise that the beauty is in the people and the process, not in the clothes themselves. I wanted to capture that in this book.”
HYEIN SEO have called this area of Seoul home for several years now —their original atelier and showroom was in the basement of a nearby building. Now though, they’ve finally been able to realise their dreams of an HQ that houses both their first physical shop and studio in one. “We always wanted to have a space where people could come and see the collection with their own eyes before purchase,” says Lee. “Our store is set up in a way that allows visitors to focus more on the clothes themselves, so we designed the space to be quite streamlined. Each season has a different theme; we plan to vary the music and installations accordingly.” With collections previously having drawn inspiration from the likes of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, shoppers and fashion fans are guaranteed a new experience with every visit.
Upstairs, the second and third floors house HYEIN SEO’s office and atelier, where the duo now have 20 staff and a Korean Jindo puppy called Mori. On our visit, we found two resident tailors and a seamstress diligently creating prototypes for the coming season – all of the hand-finished garments and jewellery that make up HYEIN SEO’s collections take shape here. While Hyein oversees the entire collection as creative director, Jinho is behind the business side of things, with her role spanning everything from store interiors to their new brand identity and revamped website.
A particular focus of Jinho’s is further collaborations with outside creatives, starting with the SS23 campaign projections, but extending to designing clothes for K-pop groups and Netflix shows. “I’d like to connect more with musicians, photographers and models, and work on more exciting projects with them,” she says. “Now that we’ve opened the store, we’re stepping up the menswear side a little bit more too.” As for the rebrand, outside of the obvious shift in aesthetic values, longtime fans of the cult label may have noticed a recent change in their logo typeface. “We didn’t want to make a big change, like those made by mammoth fashion houses when they have new creative directors,” says Seo. “We just wanted it to reflect the fact that we’re getting older and more mature.”
Indeed, HYEIN SEO’s aesthetic has evolved from what had once been dubbed “street couture” to include more craft-based details and natural elements throughout the collections and campaigns. “For my graduation collection, I had a clear goal to be visually striking, so I went for clothes that were fun to look at rather than fun to wear,” Hyein says. “The more we make clothes though, the more we want to make clothes that we actually want in our wardrobes. We’re disillusioned with show-stopping fashion that comes and goes; HYEIN SEO designs have become more and more wearable.” The increasing incorporation of handmade craft elements, too, has become a hallmark Hyein doesn’t want to let go of. “There’s a part of us that actually moves away from what’s popular,” she continues. “We work on what we think is appropriate right now, but who knows, in the future we might make a collection with graphic design at the forefront again”.
The brand’s AW23 collection pushes back against the technical, gorpcore-leaning mood of the Nausicaä collection and takes things in a more classic direction. “It was inspired by a beautiful children’s book called Du pays des Amazones aux îles Indigo where the author, Francois Place, imagines an island that doesn’t really exist and describes the life of a tribe living there,” Hyein says. Silk dyed in India and silver buttons hammered out by hand, one by one, were intended to convey ancient artefacts. While some of the buyers she met in Paris were concerned about this radical change of aesthetic, she believes it is her job to ensure their clothes are long-lasting in both appeal and construction. “It’s definitely not for everyone,” adds Lee of the pivot. “I always feel like we’re suggesting something completely new; something that we didn’t know we needed.”
In the age of K-Pop and Hallyu, Korean culture is at peak influence. Case in point? Not only have HYEIN SEO just designed the looks in idol group NewJeans’ music video for “Cookie”, they’ve also been commissioned by Netflix Japan to create costumes for a series of their high school dramas. Hyein describes it as “the right time” for their brand. “I think I’m benefiting a lot from the Hallyu [the name given to the wave of Korean culture currently sweeping the globe] – it’s a time when people pay attention to you just because you’re from Korea. There are a lot of designers around the same age who are telling their own stories without actively referencing others; it’s very energising. It’s a kind of scene.”
“I don’t know if we have our own cult,” muses Hyein of the steady and loyal following of buyers the brand has. “But sometimes I see people who don’t seem to have any obvious contact with HYEIN SEO, who know what we’ve been working on… that gives me strength.”
Credit
Photography Injun Park