Rok Hwang gave vent to his romantic tendencies whereas he was engaged on fall in his studio in Seoul. “I believe since final season I have been exploring one thing that was a little bit bit extra quiet. Sitting draping and taking part in round with patterns in my studio, deciding what I like, and being a little bit extra Zen.”
Hwang has all the time been a latter-day deconstructionist, a chopper-up of trenches, fits, and corsetry whose themes have ranged round workplace dressing, cocktail-wear, and his recollections of the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s in Texas and London. This time, his instincts led him to a extra free-wheeling type of collage of disparate parts—a renaissance mannerist portray of a male angel, which he had reproduced in a tapestry and on prints, lengthy sheepskin-lookalike coats, raw-edged tailoring, fragments of Victoriana, and navy fatigues. It was additionally the primary Rokh present that included so many males’s seems.
Although they work continents aside, Hwang’s assortment bore a couple of odd similarities to Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe. Towards the top of the present, there was a swagged vintage floral dévoré print costume creating an attention-grabbing quantity, however paired with grey, pretty extraordinary seeming coordinates. Anderson’s level was to take a look at the collections of the rich, which Hwang’s tapestry would additionally match. Disconcertingly, nonetheless, when it got here, he draped the material over the pinnacle and physique of a mannequin, making holes for the eyes.
Hwang didn’t describe his intentions, besides to say obliquely how a lot he enjoys seeing individuals on the street carrying Rokh. “And so they all look totally different from one another, and totally different from the way in which I’ve proven it. Individuals like to adapt what I do.”
His experimentation doesn’t all the time make for an easily-understood narrative or silhouettes, though they have been stunning when he targeting draping a rose-bud printed ‘granny’s bed-quilt’ as a doubled-up cocoon coat, wrapping and knotting creamy lace layers over a traily Victoriana petticoat, and protecting coats with naive garlands of crocheted flowers. But it surely’s wholesome for designers to permit themselves a inventive outlet—as Demna put it this week, “creativity is the brand new luxurious.”
