Congratulations on SS22! Could you tell us a bit about the new collection “Chaos is our comfort zone“?
Thank you! When I started the research for this collection, I knew I wanted to do something chaotic. Not in a crazy or messy way, but when I asked my interns to help with the research for the new collection I told them to focus on something chaotic and sexy. It was important that when the models or anyone else is wearing the collection, they should feel confident and comfortable. For me, when I wear something revealing and sexy, often I don’t feel comfortable. With this collection, I want to make a statement – sexy stuff can mean comfort as well. I always talk about “Crazy can be normal”, but I think this time, it’s a bit different. The chaos is not only about the look, but also the situation around us. Last season, I talked about horror and me not knowing what’s going on and what’s going to happen in the future. This time I was asking myself, “what is comfort for me?” To me, London was like home. It is still home because I’ve lived there for ten years. But, Asian hate happened last year and also this year and, I don’t want to get too much into politics, but somehow I did not really feel comfortable in London. “Comfortable” might not be the right word, but I felt like maybe it is not really my home. And, at that point, I had not come to Korea for a year. So that is how this idea of comfort and what that means came to be. Obviously, I have friends in London, a home, and a studio. I know my way around. I wanted to bring those thoughts into the clothes as well as something sexy visually.
It does feel very sexy. Looking at the previous season, AW21, even the imagery alone was very dark and mysterious. It reflected the current state of the world at that time. For SS22, you had a white background. It was very light and clear. And the sexiness definitely comes through with the chain elements.
Exactly. It’s more about revealing yourself, showing your tits and your butt cheeks. All that can be comfortable as well. That was one thing that I wanted to say with this collection. Funny story – I was walking by Kate Morgan one time when I was starting this collection. There’s this poet who’s always writing poems for people who give him three words and he comes up with it on the spot. I saw him like two years ago, but I never saw him again. I wanted to ask him to make a poem for me. And then, thankfully, I found him randomly one day and the words I gave him were “chaos” and “comfort zone”. And he made that amazing poem. If you read it and think of the collection, it just makes sense. Actually, the name of the collection, “Chaos is our comfort zone”, is part of the poem. That was the proper starting point for me as it became the story for the whole season.