Shining silvery, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza towers in the night sky of South Korea's capital Seoul. The imposing building complex, designed by Zaha Hadid in the office, looks like a UFO.
During the day, it serves as a futuristic backdrop for models and bloggers posing for photographers during Seoul Fashion Week. Twice a year, the fashion week takes place in the building - just finished the shows for the spring of 2020 to end. The street style here always seems a bit more extravagant than in other cities.
Katharina Peters / THE MIRROR
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But this October night is all about one woman: Sul Yun Hyoung, 75 years old, who does not look so vain, but rather nervous. Her life's work will be honored at Fashion Week with a special exhibition at Dongdaemun Design Plaza. Because Sul is one of the most famous Korean designers.
She wears a wide white blouse and black pants at the opening reception. Reduced that works against those of her own creations, which she presents this evening. You can see opulent skirts and sequins embroidered with sequins, woven tops made of wires and playful vests, much in bold colors. They are her masterpieces from 53 years as a designer. At the end of a short speech she says to the guests: "This is also your story, your childhood."
"Desire" is the title of the exhibition. With her designs she wants to "hold something lost", says Sul. Like few others, she manages to translate classical Korean patterns and techniques into modern designs.
Graphical cotton fabrics are a closer look at historical window patterns. Korea's traditional wrapping paper "Bojagi", which is made up of several colorful fabric rectangles, has inspired Sul to drape summer dresses.
A traditional motif printed on fabric turns into a sprawling, cotton-lined silk skirt, like a Hollywood star. It shows a stylized landscape that stood on a screen - called "Irworobongdo" - in the 14th century behind the Korean king.
Sul Yun Hyoung
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The search for what makes Korean designs unique, for their very own DNA, was perhaps the big theme of this Seoul Fashion Week. The fashion week in South Korea has big ambitions. The so-called "K-Fashion" is to become pop music and beauty products, the next major export hit of the country.
Although South Korean fashion is in demand in Asia, and in Seoul, it is part of the urban culture, with neat and fashion-consciously dressed residents and large luxury department stores, but the big international breakthrough of a label has not yet succeeded. After all, Net-a-Porter, the online store for luxury brands, has just combined some Korean designers into a "Korea Collective".
Sul Yun Hyoung
Sul Yun Hyoung: She combines elements of East and West in her designs
However, Fashion Week designers are often accused of jumping from trend to trend. European and American observers are trying to grasp what constitutes Korean culture and how it translates into fashion.
As the designer of South Korean label Moho made the country's almost two-year military service the subject of his collection last year, Vogue fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen praised: "Statements like these help us to better understand Korean fashion because they are the most popular It sheds light on South Korean culture, tradition and mentality, and that is essential if a nation wants to become one of the big names in the international fashion industry. " Far too many designers in Seoul would, he thought, "fool around, try out over-complicated cuts and off-the-shelf clothing concepts."
The South Korean label Münn is one of the more well-known and already showed its fashion at the London Fashion Week. At the Seoul show this fall, it featured models inspired by traditional Korean styles: the lines of Hanbok robe combined Münn with light, often transparent fabrics.
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Seoul Fashion Week: "Clothes are forever""Can there be a future, including K-pop, unrelated to the past?" Asked famous fashion expert Suzy Menkes on her visit to Seoul four years ago. "This is the challenge for Korea's designers: to solve the conflict between past and future, to make K-Fashion for today."
Maybe that's what Sul Yun Hyoung now says when she criticizes: "Many young designers love fast fashion, they have no roots in their designs, they just want to be successful quickly."
Park Minj Ji
Sul Yun Hyoung: "For me, clothing is not something that only applies for a limited time"
A career as a designer seemed unimaginable to her at first, and she worked hard for it. Sul was born in 1944, six years before the beginning of the Korean War that devastated the country. After the war, she collected scraps of cloth that the tailors no longer needed. She put them together, playing with shapes and colors. Sometimes there were even scraps of silk. This game can still be seen in her designs, in which she combines elements of Eastern and Western culture.
She did not get to know western clothes until she was a teenager. At the charity shop she discovered trousers or sweaters donated by Americans. "I ran home, washed them and dried them over our cauldron so I could carry them as fast as possible." Sul tells this when visiting her studio, a week before the exhibition. She laughs at the memory of it. "Only those who have so much passion for fashion can become designers."
Her parents did not know what a designer was doing - it was important to them that she make money. Sul worked during the day in a children's home, in the evening she learned the trade. In the 1970s, she opened her first store in Seoul.
Sul became known for her various techniques - embroidery, patchwork, weaving, dyeing. The embroidery on her clothes takes up to a month's working time. But there are only a few left who master this technique, she says. Design needs devotion. "I love fashion, clothing is nothing for me that only applies for a limited time, it's forever."
