“The feMALE” by Hyerim Hong

1. Please introduce yourself to our readers. (Who are you, where do you come from and what is your field of specialization?) 

My name is Hyerim Hong but my friends call me Rim. I’m from Seoul, Korea. I used to study business and work in the business field. However I really wanted to I changed it to fashion. I finished my master’s degree in Fashion design technology – woman’s wear- in London at the College of Fashion. I like tailoring, textile and handcrafted work as I’ve done in this collection.

2. Can you talk us through the concept of your collection? 

This collection is a story of a girl, H. It followed the girl H’s changes from interactions with different types of men. The designs are mixed. Not only her self’s traits but also individual male traits are incorporated into the collection. This is the reason why the title is not ‘a female’ but “The feMALE”.

3. How is the relationship between female and male portrayed in your collection? 

Gender traits are not pre-set but arise out of transactions between male and female. Gender traits are created constantly by exchanges between men and women. In other to words, relationships between men and women bring perpetual changes to both of them. Thus, a woman would be changed significantly by initiating and carrying on a relationship. These changes would be shown in all aspects of her such as acting, thinking, talking, etc. This collection aims at visualizing the journey of a woman’s relationships in terms of fashion design.

4. Has this relationship always been present in your work or is it something you only approached for this collection? 

I’ve always got inspired by humans because clothes are basically based on the human body. But clothing is used as one of the methods of communicating with others. Moreover, it stands for many things such as gender, status, wealth etc. So, for this collection I focused on relationships in the aspect of clothes as a communication method. And I thought about the very basic relationship that exists between man and woman.

5. What was the biggest challenge in that particular project? 

The biggest challenge was metal beading. The total weight of all the metals used is 5kg and the number of the metals is more than 10,000 pieces. It made the clothes heavy and the design changed because of technical problem. Moreover, it took more than 3 weeks of beading metals by hand. But I’m fully satisfied about the results.

6. Your designs have a warrior-feeling to it – what made you go in this direction?  

I did research about male stereotypes to create a story about what kind of men ‘H’ would meet. I discovered that these stereotypes that I found are not constant but inconstant according to history, society, culture, education, family and friends. During war, the warrior type was the majority of male stereotypes which changed to the politician type. Moreover, the metro-sexual type appeared. Now, there is a new type, Über-sexual which is assumed as an ideal type. Therefore, the story is H’s journey of finding the ideal type of man. It started with the warrior type for this collection. Other stereotypes would follow to coming collections.

7. How do you personally define „fashionclash“ or „ a clash with fashion“ for yourself? 

For me, fashion clash is the driving force to break rules. I’m always enjoying combining very different things. And I think fashion clash makes something unique all the time!

Pictures by Doh Lee