EENK AW 24-25 Fall-Winter 2024/2025 COLLECTION during Paris Fashion Week
Since its founding in 2013, each of EENKs collections has represented a chapter of the labels Letter Project, pondering a theme in line with a par- ticular letter of the Roman alphabet K for Knit; U for Utopia; Y for Yes- terday, and so on. AW24 marks a full-circle moment in the Seoul-based luxury brands conceptual trajectory: Z for Zero to One.
Gesturing towards concurrent notions of completion and new begin- nings, the collection sees brand founder Hyemee Lee contemplate the value of zero in East Asian philosophical traditions Taoism in particular. While in Western cultures, the figure is typically perceived as a cipher for absence, Hyemee highlights its antithetical connotations of abstract pleni- tude a state of non-being in which the boundaries between the individual constituents of a wider whole dissolve; a state of everything-ness, rather than nothingness, if you will.
It is this intrinsic relationship between zero and one that serves as the collections conceptual underpinning. Notions of how a whole is defined by the individual components it comprises are expressed through innovative experiments in colour, texture and couture-level detail.
Tufted overcoats envelop the body, cutting bold silhouettes that are the result of a clumped-together mass of woollen fronds. The fabric becomes a material baseline throughout the collection, appearing across trims, ban- deaus, a chain-appliqu dress and even a pair of mens shorts. A cocoon coat illustrates the collections central theme through its composition a gauzy tissage while a bobbled skirt is crafted from three-dimensional roses, each painstakingly crafted from individual organza petals.
A brushed coat shimmers with metallic fibres and a pencil skirt and split-hemmed cigarette pants come speckled with glinting crystal embel- lishments; individual sparkles come together to create an uplifting visual texture, recalling the innumerable mass of stars that populate the all-en- compassing night sky. This sense of infinity, of endlessness, is alluded to through ballooning, couture silhouettes from convex skirts comprised of fused strips of champagne satin to swollen bishop-sleeved coats, garments take a 0 shape.
While prior chapters in EENKs Letter Project have demonstrated an in- tuitively eccentric approach to colour, Zero to One sees Hyemee resort to a binary palette of black and cream. Novel territory for the brand, this visual restraint allows for a more concentrated consideration of form and its relationship to the collections philosophical preoccupations.
Despite this opening of new horizons, the importance of building on a foundation of heritage is strongly alluded to in this seasons accessories. Traditional Korean sartorialism is subtly invoked by way of a leather ankle boot with a contrast upper nodding to beoseon while a slouchy shoulder bag with a belt detail offers a modern interpretation of the botjim, a bundle-style bag historically worn as a backpack. Proudly dis- tinct as individual entities, when brought together, the collections pieces amass to create a robust whole.
Runway Looks
Photo: Press EENK
More on: @eenk_official
By Senior Fashion Editor 24FashionTV: Christina V Henningstad @christina_henningstad
