In recent years, Eudon Choi has taken to approaching his pre-fall and resort collections as palate cleansers. His inclination has been to present what is (at least at first glance) a more stripped-back offering of his chameleonic wardrobe staples: layered knits, coats with detachable panels and sleeves, or trousers with inventive fastenings and belts, as just a few examples.
His latest collection married this off-season commercial rigor with his instinct for a well-judged creative reference; for the latter, he looked to the work of Lee Ufan, the influential Korean artist who served as a foundational member of the Mono-ha movement that emerged from post-war Japan as a kind of earthy, philosophical cousin of arte povera. Choi caught a major Ufan exhibition while he was visiting Seoul, where he first trained as a menswear designer, last spring, and also cites the contemporary art boom in Korea (most recently buoyed by the introduction of the Frieze Art Fair to Seoul) as particularly inspiring. “It encouraged me to focus on the materials I was using,” said Choi. “To strip things back to their essence.”
Along with plenty of Choi’s classics—blouses with slashed sleeves and panels attached by buttons, the louche draping of his bias cut shirt dresses, ribbed knits—there were some new, standout pieces in the mix. The first look, consisting of an asymmetric riff on a trench coat with a single epaulette and matching trousers, was both sleek and practical (and came in a recurring shade of deep navy that neatly echoed the counterintuitively vibrant neutrals of Ufan’s work). Elsewhere, shimmering metallic satins and a painterly brushstroke print with a deliberately messy bleed around the edges added a further note of artistic flair, while statuesque woolen tailored coats and luxuriously soft knitted tanks looked ready to fly off the shelves. Once again, Choi offered a fully realized wardrobe of smart, grown-up clothes for his following of smart, grown-up women.
