After a strong debut last season on Seoul Fashion Week’s main stage, designer Eun-hye Jo of Bourie returned with a solid evolution for her brand. As a newer talent, she made the smart choice to streamline, sticking largely to clean monochromatic colors to let her cutting and deconstructed details take the spotlight.
Her starting point was the ’80s, a decade she looks back on fondly. “Because I was born in the ’80s, I return to that time a lot and in a way I draw strength from it,” she explained backstage. “I wanted to revisit those exaggerated shapes, but make the silhouette modern by playing with the tailoring.” That meant suiting, but done with the decade’s menswear squarely in mind; her swingy gaucho pants felt like a fun interpretation of the ongoing trend.
A bright azure blue featured heavily this season, a stark contrast to the red and black that defined Fall 2017. It’s why she chose to open her show with a series of white garments—an asymmetrical collared shirt with darting along the waist, a pleated shirtdress with an open back and raw hem—which also functioned as a cursory nod to spring. “When I think of blue, there’s the sea, but there’s also the wind, which I thought would go well with white,” she said. Later on, she returned to black, but with a different approach in mind. “How do I take black and make it look refreshing?” she asked. The answer was in the cut and drape of the cotton, then hemmed in white.
There felt like three thematic sections to the show, and though some editing would have helped, it somehow came together in the end with the help of a floral abstraction that figured on dresses and tops, but also in more architectural ways—the twisting and knotting of straps on the backs of suit coats. “With those knots, I wanted the flowers to come through in that ribbon,” Jo said. It was evidence of her knack for tailoring.
