Seoul Fashion Week

Drowned Dragons at R.Shemiste and a Kanye-Style Show at Supercomma B

The final days of Seoul Fashion Week tend to lack some punch, as the heavy weekend crowds must return to work and school. This season, designers made up for any lack of buzz by doubling down on themes. The results? A day filled with sometimes complex, often curious clothes—good fun, all in all.

Big Park is a family venture: Veteran designer Park Youn Soo launched the label three years ago with his daughters, Sooy and Jay Park, who both studied at Central Saint Martins and the London College of Fashion. They began with the idea of a Lost Garden, or the slow destruction of untrammeled nature by urban development. Exaggerated branches and Surrealist plants—misshapen, as though they’d mutated from pollution—were appliquéd, patchworked, and printed on silk chiffon blouses and midi skirts; folkloric florals came embroidered on ruffles, and running up flares. There was velvet—black ribbons worn as chokers and hairbands—and dazzling emerald green prairie boots that resembled forest moss crossed with nuclear waste, in the best way.

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Nature took a different tack at R.Shemiste, where denimhead designers Jiyeun Won and Jooho Lee were inspired by Katsushika Hokusai, the Edo-era ukiyo-e painter. Hair was left wet and stringy, as though models had emerged from the sea after being hit by The Great Wave Off Kanagawa; one even walked barefoot. White dragons embroidered on sleeves had threads left dangling, which clung to the garments like strands of seaweed, and there were keyholes on the backs of shirts that mimicked submarine windows. Blue and white tops with exaggerated cuffs had sleeves dripping in pearls—perhaps a subtle allusion to Hokusai’s infamous Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife? Whatever the reference, the result was striking.

Over at Jarret, Ji Youn Lee went all in on apples. There were bright red ones perched on chairs for snacking, and the letter A was stamped on basketweave slingback flats. Abstract hand drawings of apple halves, melting like Dalí clocks, covered sheer tops and crisp white blazers, while the word Apple was embroidered in funky script on sweatshirts and scrawled on ribbon tags that sprung from shoulders and hips. The standout interpretation, however, was the simplest: a two-piece set in candy-apple red.

Designer Bonnie Lee is best known for the inventive footwear she turns out at Suecomma Bonnie; the sophomore Fashion Week outing of Supercomma B, her unisex streetwear line, felt a great deal like Kanye West’s turn at Adidas, at least at first. To start, muted materials were punctuated by shocks of color in retro ’80s style. Halfway through the show, hip-hop power couple Tiger JK and Yoon Mirae took a turn down the runway, signaling a move toward oil-slick sequin skirts and shorts, and a dramatic blue sequin gown. A finale walk filled with Gundam and Transformers-style mecha shirts made for a surreal end to the day.

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