September 8, 2023 |
Returning to the runway for the first time since its debut show during Paris Men’s fashion Week in February 2020, We11done’s SS24 collection, Remnants of Home, paid homage to the indelible legacy of Do Ho Suh. Renowned for his transformative work in memorialisation, re-creating architectural structures and objects using fabric, Suh’s enigmatic works, transforming structural memories into space, lent themselves to the transcendent designs that coalesced on the catwalk.
Showing in Seoul – the happy home of the brand and insouciant creative brainchild of Jessica Jung and Dami Kwon – the lines between sculpture and sartorialism blurred, bringing playfully inventive ephemera to the K-Pop Square in Coex, a landmark of Korean pop culture in the heart of the Gangnam district, where the catwalk kicked off. Garments echoed the reminiscences of growing up in Korea and a skewed sense of the familiar that emerged through a spattering of scattered memories and recognisable yet surreal textures, silhouettes and symbolism. Mimicking the curvatures of a childhood blanket were stiff, folded and ruched strapless dresses. The pleats of a forgotten school uniform were hardened and presented as little circle skirts without the waistband while the linoleum wood-printed flooring of a family room was reimagined as both as a print on jersey and as is on glazed boxy tops.
Mirroring Suh’s use of fabric to evoke memory, reappropriated belt buckles became disproportionate jewellery erections and the lace-trimmed edges of separates induced the mood of a negligée once worn by a loved one. Crinkly precision-cut separates were created by inserting paper between the cotton outer shell and lining, creating carefully considered creases evocative of early pantins.
The palette was rather demure, with simple pyjama-like sets and sophisticated day-to-night wear cascading in tones of optic white, beige and black. Gleaming crimson, canary yellow, mahogany and ice blue accents struck a kindergarten chord.
Through its study of contrasts – the old and the new, menswear and womenswear, something real and something that will disappear – We11done built memories into its clothes. A sort of soft-relaunch of the Korean label, it ventured into uncharted territory, finding something fantastically familiar and riddled with nostalgia to intertwine in an enigmatic waltz. At We11done, there really is no place like home.
Photography courtesy of We11done.
