Wind from South Korea blew up Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2007
Mercedes Benz Fashion week kicked off in NYC again. The week epitomized style and design for Fall 2007. A week filled with glamorous fashionistas, top designers, celebrities, models movie stars and journalists! There’s no better time to be in NYC than during Fashion Week. The city that didn’t sleep, lived and breathed fashion for eight days from Feb. 02 to 09.
This Fashion week featured shows from fashion heavy-hitters like Anna Sui, Michael Kors and Betsey Johnson, as well as up-and-coming designers. The Fall collections were shown in The Tent, Promenade, Showroom and Salon in Bryant Park, which is on Sixth Avenue between 40th and 42nd streets, as well as other non-tent venues. A lineup of seventy-seven designers from all over the world presented their runway Fall 2007 collections.
In Asia, only the Tokyo collection is famous in the fashion industry. So many Asian designers don’t ever get a chance to debut the world stage.
Out of these seventy-seven designers, four stand out in the crowd and caught my eye: Doo.Ri, Y&Kei, Richard Choi and Chris Han. They are Korean-American. In surveying prominent designers, these four are set apart in their uniqueness and are presented in front of audiences and journalists at the forefront of this event. Amid this fanfare, and only in New York, home to the fashion capital of the world, these designers are the idols of numerous Korean students who coming to New York City to study fashion. Now, let me introduce Doo.Ri Chung who is considered the frontrunner of these powerful Korean-American designers.
Who is this Korean-American designer?
The fashion industry has high expectations for designer Doo.Ri Chung, who won the prestigious CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award in November.
She emigrated from South Korea with her parents when she was only four years old. She studied at the Parsons School of Design and graduated in 1995.
In 2001, Doo.Ri started hawking her label, Doo.Ri, and debuted on the runway in Spring 2003. Before getting a much-needed boost financially and psychologically from an Ecco Domani award and a finalist slot for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, she had been working out of the basement of her parents’ New Jersey dry-cleaning store. She also won the coveted CFDA’s Swarovski Perry Ellis award for women’s wear this past June.
Editors and shoppers alike love her designs for their interesting architectural details that are very tricky. She works in ever-flattering jersey that drapes, gathers, and droops in all the right places, adding small touches such as chains closing a dramatic plunging back line or leather bands cinching the waist, to each piece.
In this Fashion Week, her fall 2007 collection also received a lot of love and respect from many guests and journalists. One of the guests (age 31/female/manhattan) said, “I’ve never seen such the best “backs’! It’s very sexy but wearable!” Actually, her collection’s simple, sleek designs are always stylish, but also very wearable, which is why people love her clothing. Additionally, this collection showed that her signature jersey dresses got a little complicated, and it would’ve been nice to see her work in other colors than bordeaux, emerald, and navy. And the best part about all of these pieces? They move with the body. They swing and flow! Each piece’s material pleats and cuts have such great fluidity. They just look so flirty and comfortable.
In fact, most world-famous fashion designers come from the United States or some European country. Fashion week collections well known to the world are shown in just New York, London, Paris and Milan. In Asia, only the Tokyo collection is famous in the fashion industry. So many Asian designers don’t ever get a chance to debut the world stage.
This kind of achievement is hard. However, Doo.Ri Chung gained fame by herself. It’s considered great for Korea as her mother country. Korean people rejoice to hear about Doo.Ri’s achievement. And everyone in the fashion industry is encouraged by the results of her success. I hope more designers from Korea and Asia will be able to debut at New York Fashion Week and that the fashion industry in Asia will become more powerful in this competitive market.
Ka ee Yun was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. She’s been influenced by her parents who love writing and literature. She has enjoyed writing and reading from her childhood. She majored in Korean Literature at her University and is studying English in New York City.