Comparatively little is written about South Korean denim, especially when contrasted with the collector’s paradise that is Japan, the country’s neighbour. Inside Denim talks to two protagonists on the scene in Seoul, both with unique insights to share on denim’s heritage and contemporary potency in the city.

One of many threads to South Korean denim culture today is amekaji, a Japanese term meaning “American casual”, so the founder-designer behind Seoul-based fashion brand Painters, Won Jeon, tells Inside Denim. Applied to wearers of what is considered to be American-inspired fashion (a demographic which, Mr Jeon says, tends to skew younger), the phrase more than hints at one interpretation of denim’s place in the world, from a North-East Asian perspective.

In Mr Jeon’s view, however, wearing denim is “not a major trend” in Seoul, at least. He says that “few designers” work with denim in any meaningful way, though he points to South Korean actress Kong Hyo-jin and actor Bae Jung-nam, both known for incorporating denim into their everyday style, as local influencers. Instead, Mr Jeon’s own eye was drawn to the “undervalued” fabric while researching global street cultures for Painters’ spring-summer 2021 collection, which showed at Seoul Fashion Week last October. Denim’s “subcultural” history and typically “working class” roots, plus its strong identity on account of its prominent visual role in moments of cultural “resistance”, deemed it suitable for Painters’ nonconformist palette, he says.

Down to Dongdaemun

Mr Jeon sources all the denim used in his collections for Painters from denim merchants KunSan, based in Daejeon, central South Korea, but also has a shopfront in Seoul within the famous Dongdaemun shopping complex, the largest fabric market in the country. Characteristic of fabric shopping in Seoul, Mr Jeon says, KunSan does not have an online presence, in order to prevent the unwanted copying of its hundreds of different denim samples by competitors. The designer relays to Inside Denim that while it might be “better to go to different countries [such as Japan]” to purchase denim, he feels “lucky” to have found and established a positive professional relationship with his chosen denim supplier. “I try to create a deep bond between the fabrics I select and Painters as a brand by sourcing all materials in Seoul,” he tells us.

Visits to KunSan often inspire a “half and half” approach to realising his initial sketches in denim, Mr Jeon says. The sheer scale, diversity and ever-changing nature of the enterprise’s offerings mean that he frequently – yet, always unexpectedly – leaves with more than one fabric to experiment with, as opposed to sticking fast to any preconceived idea, a creative process which he admits to enjoying very much. He mostly opts for 100% cotton, handwoven denim fabrics  though, and avoids stretch. As the sustainable fashion conversation gains increasing traction around the globe, Mr Jeon is considering branching out into other fibres (such as hemp and Tencel, a wood-based cellulosic fibre), but is taking steps to first “completely understand” the field prior to making any changes.

Painters’ production of denim pieces such as jeans and overalls is usually outsourced elsewhere in Seoul, but Mr Jeon controls the pattern-making and final sampling processes in his studio. Ever since interning with Paris-born, London-based designer Faustine Steinmetz while a London College of Fashion student, Mr Jeon has been interested in hand-dyeing techniques, which led to his discovery and subsequent experimentation with the Japanese shibori manual resist method, a prominent design element of the denim pieces he showed during his October 2020 presentation. For spring-summer 2021, the designer mainly used Sanforized denim (already fixed to avoid or minimise any shrinking) and layered different washes on top of each other, intentionally “damaging” the fabric’s edges to achieve the raw fringes seen in the collection.

Rising between Seoul and Japan

Bona fide denim lover and co-founder of early South Korean raw selvedge denim company Twilled & Co (which closed in 2017) and the now-iconic imported denim shop Brick Seoul (which shut its doors in 2014) Howard Lee similarly straddled two different denim worlds, with a dual focus on the contemporaneous denim scene in Seoul and the more established denim heritage of neighbouring Japan. Though Mr Lee was forced to dissolve Twilled & Co while taking up his compulsory military service a few years ago, it is clear that denim remains as much in his heart and on his mind today as during his pre-Brick Seoul days, when he would purchase and ultimately take apart denim jeans from Japan and the United States for years, just to investigate production differences between pairs down to the “smallest details”.

“Finding the perfect pair of jeans is quite tricky, with so much to consider, namely: the fit, the denim and its colour and fade, the craftsmanship and the tiniest details, plus the brand and its values – all of these have to be right,” Mr Lee says. Out of frustration with there being “so many great denim brands throughout the world, but not so much in the South Korean market”, he opened Brick Seoul in spring 2012, with the intention to make it “the” source for denim on the Korean Peninsula. Brick Seoul’s line-up of exclusively raw selvedge denim included Rogue Territory (imported from the US), Bldwn (US), Naked & Famous Denim (Canada), 3sixteen (US), The Flat Head (Japan) and Momotaro Jeans (Japan).

Mr Lee recalls that Rogue Territory was Brick Seoul’s most popular brand, specifically its Stanton jeans. “People really loved the fit and the colour – or fade – of the denim the brand got from Nihon Menpu,” he tells us. It was a “big mistake” to close Brick Seoul, Mr Lee confides. “I had closed a great shop where I could talk and share ideas with other people passionate about denim,” he continues. He did it to focus his energies on nurturing Twilled & Co, though, which he launched in spring 2014 and, as with Brick Seoul a couple of years prior, fully intended to grow into the top denim brand in South Korea through creating the “perfect” pair of jeans for the Korean market, in terms of quality, fit and price.

Interestingly, at that time denim mills in South Korea were primarily producing “budget-friendly” denim, so Mr Lee and his business partner Sam Yoon ingeniously produced Twilled & Co’s denim garments in both Seoul and Japan, using the same Japanese selvedge (the “finest”) from Collect and Kaihara mills, to offer denim at different price points. Garments made in Seoul were priced “more accessibly” (slight detail changes were made to bring production costs down, Mr Lee tells Inside Denim), while the Japanese-made jeans were crafted “to the highest quality standards” and, therefore, were priced higher. Twilled & Co’s standard denim – 13.25 ounces of Sanforized and pure indigo rope-dyed, ringspun Memphis cotton, woven in Japan – was sourced from Collect. The Kaihara denim used was pure indigo rope-dyed selvedge, with the weight differing slightly from denim to denim.

Shades of blue

For both Mr Lee and Mr Jeon, denim is intensely personal. While Mr Jeon employs the, for him, underrated yet symbolically charged fabric as something of a vehicle for creating “new” shapes and expressing his own, progressive artistic viewpoint as a designer, Mr Lee brings our discussion back to the intimate nature of “breaking in” one’s own pair of jeans, a unique process which ultimately makes them “truly yours”. Mr Jeon’s desire to keep moving the design and production techniques of denim “forward” is perhaps a nod towards the increased diversity and maturity of the South Korean denim scene today, as Mr Lee sees it (local brands Demil and Bespoke Denim are current particular favourites of his), the perfect stage - or runway - for Mr Jeon’s aesthetic innovations. So much more than an imported idea or yesterday’s fad, the contemporary denim outlook in Seoul is imbued with creative flair, originality, communal support and keen determination.

Mr Jeon plans to further develop his denim designs and techniques. His method is experimental, and he seeks to create “new shapes, proportions and details” with future collections.

Credit image: Painters

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