Wooyoungmi Reimagines Winter With Grandeur and Grit

Winters get pretty brutal in South Korea. That was the direct inspiration for Madame Woo at Wooyoungmi – a practical issue, a lived experience, that she could twist into a creative conceit. Why not look at winter dress around the world, through the ages, with grandeur, strength and depth? Icy steamtrains, versus defrosted jet planes. Given that half the American contingent is currently stranded at the European fashion shows due to sub-zero conditions in New York, it felt prescient. And it’s an Autumn/Winter collection – it’s always good when designers get that memo.

Korea may be known for its pop music, but this was less K-Pop more K-Prop: there was a big swirl of Franz Ferdinand, as in one man rather than band, with swaggering thick wool Chesterfield coats lined in faux-astrakhan and towering Zhivago hats throwing back to the Austro-Hungarian at the turn of the last century. Hey, politics are pretty dicey right now, so again that feels on the money, although these are easily divorced from the costume books. And in actual fact this Wooyoungmi collection took in a sweep of winter references and locales, times and places, with craft knits nodding to Tibet and Mongolia, and dandy-ish high-break double-breasted tailoring that could be Edwardian, or its 1960s revival. They were buttoned-up tight against the cold – works then, and now.

Madame Woo wasn’t embarking on a history lesson, however. Rather, that richness drawn from the past was incorporated into contemporary items – rugged hiking boots were proposed in polished leathers, those craft-knits became parkas lined in shaggy Mongolian lamb, or were streamlined into form-hugging bodysuits. Lightweight hooded outerwear in technical fabrics were pieced with lustrous velvet – a recurrent fabric of the season, here unusually used. That faux-karakul was also cut into short, sweet bomber jackets, for him and her. And those great coats were great, regardless of time period. As good in 2026 as 1916.

“Protective elegance” was a catch-all phrase. And don’t we all need a bit of protection right now – whether from weather, or the wider world?