The demise of personal style has long been a hot topic among fashion lovers. Newsletters, personal essays, trend recaps – fashion writers seem preoccupied with the
state of personality, and indeed, despite our best efforts, we all seem to wear the same. But it’s not that we all look like copies of each other, it’s that we all look at similar things. Our personalities are defined by variations of the same things – we have access to everything but algorithms and taxonomies and “for you” pages…they all show us a mix of similar source material.
This is the background for Yoon’s Fallen 2023 Ambush collection. “I like to mix elements that inspire me and find a good balance between them in my world,” the designer said over breakfast—she said at New York hosts a rave Nike – “But there’s always an underlying social study. I’m curious as to why people behave a certain way or react to certain things.”
Yoon recreated the rave scene last season; for fall “the kids party so much that they’re sent to private schools.” She’s intrigued by the idea of adding personality to something as restrictive as a uniform. How to find identity in monotony? For Yoon, the answer is in the details. Well-tailored shorts and trousers featured attractive double belts; button-down shirts and jackets were cut to fall over the shoulders and held in place by grommet straps; charcoal knits with distressed hems; corsets varsity jackets with an extra layer of leather; oversized blazers and coats with suspenders at the chest; and leather jackets with spray-painted patterns. You can keep the kids out of the binge, but you can’t keep the kids out of the binge.
Yoon’s influences this time include Aphex Twin and K-Pop group New Jeans, Japanese private school uniforms, Kinji Fukasaku’s cult 2023 movie Battle Royale and dark tech. Techno set the tone for the season. Yoon tends to relate her collections to music, and the repetitiveness of the genre’s beats helps guide the unifying concept. “It’s not as twisted or colorful as Rave,” she says, “It’s repetitive and it’s kind of dark.”
Fashion lately has been focusing on uniforms because of their The maturity is very high and subversive. It’s ironic to wear a school uniform to a rave or fashion show, but what happens when the uniform is…a uniform? “If you look at the big picture, some people say they’re exercising their individuality, but everyone’s still wearing the same uniform as a certain trope they’re playing,” Yoon said.
It’s true – look at any street style gallery and you’ll find all the fashion archetypes. Influencers dress a certain way because they think that’s how they’re supposed to look, and so do editors and designers. We play out the same archetypes we assign to ourselves over and over again. As Yoon said, “We never really graduated from high school.”
202320232023
