Wooyoungmi

If you need any proof of the influence South Korea exerts over Gen Z, just search YouTube’s endless videos of European and American girls singing along to BTS songs in a language entirely foreign to their own. It’s a phenomenon that speaks volumes of the international power of this country’s youth culture - so when the South Korean menswear brand Wooyoungmi decided to expands its offering into womenswear, Madame Woo and her daughter Katie Chung looked to the streets of their native Seoul for guidance. There, young people have been expressing themselves through gender-fluid dressing for years, building a magnetic liberal street-style platform.

Wooyoungmi’s first official foray into womenswear felt fairly effortless. For nearly two decades, the family brand has been fine-tuning its casual but slick tailoring and outerwear and inflicting it with streetwear conceits. Those designs have long appealed to female customers but, by adding a women’s collection rather than making the brand genderless, Wooyoungmi is offering the same pieces from its men’s collection to women but in more feminine cuts, as well as conventional pieces such as skirts and dresses.

Going forward, that’s pretty much the extent of what old and new customers need to know. The rest was in the collection. A loose nod to the 1992 film of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – a literary reference used in Comme des Garçons’s collections by Rei Kawakubo last year, leading up to the opera she designed costumes for in Vienna last month – there was a faint sense of time-travel to Wooyoungmi’s his-and-hers wardrobe.

Elizabethan silhouettes were interpreted in quilted down doublets folded and buttoned at the back, some adorned in fleur-de-lis motifs, others rendered in regal powder blue. Tailoring was princely, cut generously but often cinched at the waist. Leather coats were fashioned like armour, while a little diamond-quilted velvet blouson instantly conjured images of Tilda Swinton. Ever the high priestess of androgyny, the actress discreetly appeared on garments in stills from the film. For Wooyoungmi, its first co-ed show was a harmonious way of opening the brand to both sexes and an appropriate next step.