It’s a fall night in Seoul, and a small group of Korean dancers wearing conventional black and white robes are clanging brass gongs and chanting on the entrance to Wooyoungmi’s glossy new flagship. The gang follows the procession via the imposing entrance doorways and upstairs to a big area, the place, on a desk surrounded by pyramids of shiny persimmons, sits an providing of a pig’s head.
Because the music crescendos, a line of friends provide up envelopes of cash, which they place into the swine’s open mouth earlier than bowing. A typical ritual in Korea often called gosa, it’s held to cleanse dangerous vibes and produce success to new ventures. The event is well timed: that is Wooyoungmi’s first standalone retailer in Seoul, and the onset of a retail technique the label is betting on.
South Korea’s first world menswear model
Youngmi Woo, the model’s proprietor and founder, is aware of that fortune doesn’t come straightforward. A cool and picked up 66-year-old, identified within the trade as “Madame Woo”, she glides via the group in a sharply tailor-made black swimsuit and huge sun shades. As CEO of Stable Company, which owns Wooyoungmi and its extra conservative brother, Stable Homme, she is accountable for one in all South Korea’s strongest vogue homes.
Based in 1998 as Korea’s first designer menswear model, Stable Homme paved the way in which for Wooyoungmi, which launched in 2002 and have become the primary Korean label to point out at Paris Style Week. The model operates two shops in Paris, is bought throughout 24 nations with 70 stockists, and employs 150 individuals globally. In 2024, Stable Company reported revenues of €72 million, and gross sales for Wooyoungmi have proven regular annual development of roughly 10% to twenty% over the previous few years.
Situated in Itaewon, previously residence to US military barracks and now a cosmopolitan enclave, the brand new retailer’s location is a part of a wider retail technique to say affect at residence. “In the course of the pandemic, I spotted the necessity to have a spot the place you possibly can bodily and immediately interact with the purchasers,” Madame Woo says, talking from her expansive workplace in Gangnam. Whereas Wooyoungmi shares area with Stable Homme on the aforementioned Seoul retailer, that is the primary time the label (which additionally sells womenswear) will likely be merchandised alone in Seoul. Madame Woo sees it as a possibility for the model to shore up its id there.
