Wooyoungmi: Dressing Like Morning
It was late June. Paris was in the grip of a heatwave unseen for many years. Every morning when I woke, the first thing I did was open the window, but what flooded in was not coolness; it was air already heavy with heat before the day had even begun. In the little kitchen I would pour myself a glass of ice-cold soy milk, then stand at the window and watch the city wake. The rooftops of the buildings opposite were the first to catch the sun. Below, the bakery’s shutter rolled up, the first customers collected their croissants, and cyclists passed quietly through the still-empty streets. A few hours later, the same city would be full of shows, guests and summer heat. But in that brief morning moment, Paris still belonged to itself. Perhaps that is why I love this city most in the mornings. Because people, like cities, are at their truest just before the day begins. The few minutes spent in front of the mirror are not simply the time in which we decide what to wear; they are a quiet threshold at which we choose the mood in which we will step out into the world that day.
That was exactly the thought on my mind as I made my way to Wooyoungmi’s Spring/Summer 2027 show. It was the last day of Fashion Week. The rush of the first days had given way to a gentle weariness. When I arrived at the venue, coffee, croissants and champagne were being served in the courtyard. No one was in a hurry; no one was thinking about the next invitation. The pace of that morning was different from the fashion-week rhythm we had grown used to over the past days. When I went inside, the first thing to greet me was not music. Low-voiced conversations, footsteps echoing across the floor and the old hall’s own acoustics… The crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling almost lost their reality in the greenish light, and the hall resembled less a show venue than a theatre stage waiting for the curtain to rise. People had not yet taken their seats; some wandered around the runway, others stood chatting. The show had not begun, but the atmosphere was already set. At fashion week, it is usually the music that speaks a collection’s first sentence. This time, it was silence.
When the first look appeared on the runway, I thought this was not just a story about colour. The collection was proposing a state of mind. The colours did not compete with one another. Pinks that seemed to have lingered long in the sun, blues recalling sea foam, soft yellows, mint greens and earthy tones looked as though they had all been waiting in the light of the same summer morning. The silhouettes carried the same feeling. The fabrics did not constrict the body; they moved around it. Fine shirts took in the light, wide jackets placed no weight on the shoulders, and Bermuda shorts struck a natural balance between tailoring and everyday life. Distressed leathers, sun-faded surfaces and crinkle-dyed fabrics chose to look lived-in rather than brand new. The crinkled and dyed shirts and light jackets caught my eye in particular. Seen from afar, the marks left when the fabric opened out resembled bird feathers, while fabrics tied around the head, striped canvas bags and small leather accessories lent the collection not a folkloric weight, but the lightness of a long summer journey.
As the show went on, I thought that this was not a collection about happiness. Or rather, it was not trying to show happiness, nor to describe it. It existed through the feeling it left on you. I later learned that the collection’s starting point was the Korean concept of heung. A word describing joy, rhythm, spontaneity and a shared sense of life’s energy, it was present on the runway not as a theoretical idea, but as an atmosphere you could feel. Even had I not known this, I would have sensed the same thing. The cranes, flowers and nature motifs of Korean folk painting were also part of this atmosphere. They were used not as symbols of the past, but as images that live on in today’s wardrobe. No detail tried to upstage the collection; everything served the same idea of lightness.
For days, Paris had been battling the heat. The fashion world often answered it with technical fabrics or performance-driven solutions. Wooyoungmi chose another path. It was not trying to cool the body; it was trying to lighten the spirit. When the show ended, no single look stayed with me. What stayed was more a feeling. Those few minutes in my attic flat in the morning, opening the window with a glass of ice-cold soy milk in hand, watching Paris slowly wake… Perhaps that was exactly what Madame Woo wanted to convey. Getting dressed is sometimes more than getting dressed. Sometimes it is the quietest way to begin the day a little lighter.