For Juun.J creative director Jung Wook-jun, we all have room to grow, even fashion itself.
That’s a sentiment he expressed backstage and that underpinned a spring collection inspired by youngsters playing around with clothing mined from the wardrobe of an older sibling or parent.
“I found it interesting to see how boys and girls make mistakes when they first dress,” he said through a translator. Take layering a big sister’s party dress with a sporty jacket or trying a father’s suit and ties.
The happiest experiments were those where he defined an X-shaped silhouette that was business at the top, party on the bottom.
Sharply defined shoulder lines played right into the dressier direction the designer felt was a big upcoming trend — an inkling that has been confirmed by Parisian runways so far.
A key shape of the season was Jung’s take on balloon trousers, which offered a solution for a too-large garment on a smaller body frame. His “folded trouser-and-a-half” turned the excess fabric, sometimes in a contrasting material, into handsome sculptural folds.
Particularly eye-catching were the versions cut from fluid fabrics, be it summer-weight suiting, lightly crinkled nylon or a striped cotton canvas reminiscent of overalls.
A middle section straying into too-expected pairings of formal and informal, elegant and sporty or utility and leisure felt off-kilter.
Returning to his earlier curvaceous ideas for a final section with a nautical vibe telegraphed the notion that growing is also about stumbling but getting straight back on your feet.
