After presenting its latest collection named Accepted during Seoul Fashion Week 2022, the brand Painters From Seoul @paintersfromseoul talks with Vanity Teen about how that concept came to reality, the inspiration behind it, as well as a little bit about the story and process of creation of the brand itself and the creative process followed to create such incredible designs.
Vanity Teen. Your brand is truly mesmerizing. What’s the concept behind it and why did you decide to start your own label?
Painters from Seoul. I grew up in Seoul, and I was home-schooled there. It wasn’t the typical pathway that people take there for their education, but I was lucky enough to have parents that let me pursue an alternative pathway. This allowed me to be in control of what I wore every day, instead of wearing the strict dress code demanded of students in school. That was probably when I realized how difficult it is to express individual identity through style in Seoul from a young age. After deciding to pursue fashion, I became a college student in London. While I was at university, I thought a lot about how individual identity manifested in my work. I started to watch people closely, and I found that people who pursue art and design are always pursuing new ways of seeing, thinking, and valuing individual identity. I realized that I wanted to be surrounded by like-minded people that share my values regarding this topic. I decided to start the brand PAINTERS in an effort to show different types of beauty in womenswear.
VT. I’ve seen that your designs mix a lot of textures, shapes, cuts, and fabrics. Which is the main idea behind these designs and what is the process of creating such complex pieces?
PFS. The key idea was to balance visuals between art and commercial. Also clean and complex, so first, it all starts with a word or a sentence that I’m inspired by, this season was ‘Accepted’. Then I make up stories, imagining the world that surrounded the initial idea. At the start of a project, I like to play around with ideas without thinking about the final piece. I put together all the parts of the research and the initial ideas, such as fabric and materials, and start to mix them together. When all these foundational steps are laid out, I start to sketch the shape and volume of each look. Lastly, I add any details.
VT. How was the experience of presenting your collection during Seoul Fashion Week 2022? Could you tell us more about the collection you presented?
PFS. I wanted to visualize my strong thoughts in this collection not only in the ways of looking but also in ways of presentation. Therefore, I have decided to put some isolation feelings visually so we set the red-squared frame to represent our key concepts that we are stuck in and want to be accepted in the fashion industry with strong visuals and different kicks. Therefore, we choose the public area first and go into the studio like we are having a small kind of protest in industry wearing, posing strong looks in a public area like the street and escalators or any other place.
VT. I am sure all your designs are based on a story or a concept. What inspires you to create?
PFS. The collection called ‘Accepted’ started within personal thoughts about positioning in the fashion industry. I got a few small successes and failures through the last few seasons and I personally felt that I could be accepted in the fashion industry deeply. Therefore, I decided to show this strong idea in visuals. Thus, I aimed to show between experimental visuals and commercial art through this collection so we could be accepted in this industry.
VT. To conclude, are you working on your future collection already? If so, what could you tell us about it? How do you see the future of your brand and your evolution as a designer?
PS. It is not fixed yet. However, I named it ‘Commercial Art’ and I want to show how I could put my aesthetic in commercial ways. Not only showing the art pieces like the last few collections, but I am also going to try more commercially so people could wear them in their daily life within my taste of design and this is the way that I could grow PAINTERS bigger. Therefore, I wish I could set two teams both Haute Couture and Ready-to-Wear, so we could have two lines in every season like COMME des GARCONS.
When I am much older and I look back on my life, I hope that I’ll have made diverse presentations with cool collections that aren’t related to the ever-evolving trends. I hope that I will have included thought-provoking messages within each collection and that my work will have been showcased worldwide so that people from all over the world can appreciate the values I have instilled in PAINTERS. Most importantly, I hope I don’t settle until I fulfill all my career goals.
Painters From Seoul @paintersfromseoul in conversation with Adrian Gomis @adriange_ exclusively for Vanity Teen online!