South Korean Designer Wins H&M Award

Minju Kim

Photo By Courtesy

PARIS — Hennes & Mauritz AB has named South Korean designer Minju Kim the winner of its international H&M Design Award.

The 26-year-old, who is in her final master’s year of fashion studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, unveiled her collection Tuesday at Stockholm’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

She is to receive a cash prize of 50,000 euros, or $67,250 at current exchange, and H&M will develop pieces from the collection to be sold at select H&M stores in early fall. The Swedish high-street retailer invited students from 19 fashion colleges in eight European countries to take part.

Kim said Japanese horror manga artist Junji Ito inspired her collection, titled “Dear My Friend.”

“Drawing is the most important process of my designing,” she told WWD. “When I research, I visualize how I would transform it into images and as a next step I turn the images into my own drawings, and that becomes the basis for the collection.”

Despite its dark subject matter, the collection is upbeat, with outsize proportions and pastel colors lending it a cartoonlike quality. Kim, who is studying under Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck, said she looked forward to working with the H&M design team on developing pieces for a larger audience.

“This is something really, really new for me because ordinarily, I always work by myself,” she said. “It’s a really big opportunity and I feel really grateful right now.”

H&M’s head of design Ann-Sofie Johansson, who headed the competition jury, said Kim stood out in a tough field thanks to highly imaginative pieces that were beautifully executed. “For me, it was a ‘wow’ feeling to see the collection. It’s so creative and it’s very playful, and there are millions of ideas in each piece,” she said.

A look from Minju Kim’s winning collection

Photo By Courtesy

The choice of the young, avant-garde designer reflects H&M’s recent efforts to up its fashion quotient amid a tough economic environment for fast-fashion players. The retailer will stage its first fashion show in eight years on Feb. 27 on the sidelines of Paris Fashion Week, and is developing a new brand called & Other Stories.

“I think we want to show another side of H&M,” said Johansson. “We have our basics and we have the fashion collections, but at the same time also we have so many talented designers and buyers and patternmakers within the company, so it’s really fun to be able to make these collections also and to show their skills and their creativity as well.”

Visitors to the competition’s Web site, designaward2013.hm.com, voted to award the People’s Prize to Alba Prat, who has studied at Universität der Künste in Berlin. She wins a one-month internship at Jonathan Saunders in London.

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 Joelle Diderich | January 29, 2013 | Article Link

Koreans bring Asian influence to Fashion Week

Designer Lie Sang Bong works at the Concept Korea studio before the Autumn-Winter 2013 collection show during New York Fashion Week, February 6, 2013. - Source: Reuters

Whether it is sexy and sophisticated, colourful and playful or bold and edgy, Korean fashion designers showing their autumn-winter 2013 collections at New York Fashion Week brought an Asian flair to the runway.

Five designers selected to be part of the Concept Korea project to showcase Korean talent proved the nation's fashion industry is thriving with tailored, razor-sharp cuts, creative use of colour and fabrics, whimsical patterns and architectural shapes.

"I want to tell the story of our culture," said Lie Sang Bong, who has been a designing for 32 years and is showing for the fifth time at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center, which runs through to February 14.

The antique window panes of Korean houses are an interweaving motif in his collection -- in patterns on dresses and blouses and cutouts in tailored coats and jackets.

His designs, mainly in blacks, greens and greys with accenting colours, are architectural. Many pieces have overlapping panels, accent sleeves and fine tailoring and are reversible.

"In the end I believe the story I am trying to tell is in the fashion," he said through an interpreter ahead of the show.

Contrasts, nature, graffiti

All the designers who were chosen by a panel of experts to be part of the government-sponsored program are well established in Korea and elsewhere, but showing in New York enables them to expand their brands.

"It's an opportunity for me to market myself to an international audience," said Son Jung Wan, a former artist who describes her clothes as "sexy, fierce and luxurious".

Her designs are feminine in shades of gray, beige and eggplant with fitted jackets accenting the waist, trousers with slim, sheer panels running down the leg, coats and dresses with soft fur sleeves and lots of knits.

Choiboko, a designer for 40 years, looked to nature for his latest collection. His bold print appliques in red, greens and blues are reminiscent of primitive Korean cave art. The appliques are a sharp contrast on the structured coats, jackets, dresses and trousers in shades of black and white.

"The human body is my canvas and I create art on the canvas," he explained.

Hongbum Kim, who designs under his label Cres.E Dim, used soft, detailed leather for his military style jackets and coats, and lots of layering. A sleeveless coat was transformed when it was layered with an overlaying top with sleeves.

He combined leather, silk and sheer fabric in a slinky black evening gown with a pleated back. The designs were rigid yet soft with leather topped skirts flowing into fluid pleats that reached the floor.

Each look in the collection had three different textures.

Kathleen Kye, a 26-year-old American-born designer who studied at Central Saint Martins in London and now lives in Seoul, is the youngest of the Concept Korea designers. Her Kye label is already a favourite with retailers such as Harvey Nichols in London and K-pop stars in Korea.

Kye used plenty of neoprene with designs inspired by boxes and graffiti for her unisex boxy tops, leggings and even shoes for a total head-to-toe look.

Although the inspiration for the show came from unemployed, homeless youth in Korea, Kye's collection was youthful and fun with bright pale blue coats and jackets and casual leggings and tops.

"We always chose a theme that is slightly unconventional," she said.

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Reuters | February 08, 2013 | Article Link