Korean label Youser makes remarkable debut at Milan Fashion Week

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Jun 17, 2019

Youser wowed the Milan Fashion Week audience on Sunday. With its maiden show in Italy’s fashion capital, the South Korean men’s and women’s streetwear label created in 2011 by Lee Mooyeol showcased its remarkable design savvy, presenting a series of fresh, innovative items, and displaying great technical skill in garment construction, doing interesting work in details and finishings with a collection relying on modular clothes.

The lines are graphic, the cuts bold, the colours classic, brightened by flashes of red, royal blue and lime green. The sleeves of a traditional jacket are draped with a fabric swathe that splits on the upper back, baring the neck. The buttoned collar of a classic polo flares out laterally, creating an unexpected neckline.

The sleeve of a Paisley shirt seems to shake loose from the arm, giving a glimpse of another shirt beneath it, black with white stripes. Check suits alternate with ample nylon trousers and jeans with diagonal fringes.

For this season, Lee Mooyeol amused himself by turning a Far West-style register on its head. He designed colourful leather and suede overshirts whose collar and back unravel into lengthy strips, and created cowboy trousers by superimposing white leather panels over a pair of jeans, or black vinyl ones over camo trousers, worn with cowboy boots decked with chains and spurs.

Mooyeol, 34, graduated in fashion design from Seoul’s Samsung Art and Design Institute in 2010. He then worked for M-Vio, a menswear brand owned by the Samsung conglomerate, before launching his solo career. From 2017, Mooyeol has also been the creative director of contemporary women’s ready-to-wear label 1159STUDIO. He was a finalist at the Woolmark Prize 2018, and has been showing regularly in Seoul since 2015.

His eclectic style hovering between sportswear, streetwear and couture is well-received, with its layering and graphic prints. Youser is distributed via 45 multibrand retailers in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Europe.