“It’s flashy again,” JiSun Park said, laughing backstage before the Blindness show. The genderless label she codesigns with KyuYong Shin has been a favorite among international editors due to the designers’ preference for bold colors and dramatic silhouettes, pearls, crystals, and other outsize embellishments. Until now, Korean editors had been more reluctant to jump on board with their distinctly noncommercial clothes; judging by the jam-packed front row, this was the season they finally decided to get with it.
Park explained that the pair began with Picasso’s Guernica and Massacre en Corée, two black-and-white pacifist paintings. The latter Expressionist work depicts the 1950 mass killing of North Koreans by U.S. troops, a powerful antiwar message and a pointed one given the fraught political climate. Yet Park and Shin chose to work with a reinterpretation of the original: Repainted by children in a range of vivid colors, Picasso’s harsh depiction of wartime cruelty becomes a gentler plea for peace. “We also wanted to use color to evoke a message of peace,” Park said. “With the relationship getting better between the two Koreas, maybe . . . .”
A reimagined bomber jacket has featured in the past three Blindness collections, and it felt natural to return to it here, given its military heritage. There was a distinct use of army green nylon ruffles draped over a puff-sleeved coat, while delicate silk floral linings on these reversible pieces contrasted with that camo exterior. Masses of tiered ruffles and amorphous capes draped around the body closely resembled blankets to suggest, Park explained, notions of comfort.
Truthfully, they played it safe, retreading previous designs with a few on-trend touches (patchwork scarves, reworked trenches). The message, however, could not be more personal. “The Republic of Korea and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are the only divided nations [that] exist on earth,” the show notes read. “Blindness thinks fashion is not only clothes, but the culture that spreads messages.” A deeper exploration of the relationship between those countries could be a nice way to go.
