minju kim

Minju Kim has just been ‘spotted’ for the first time. Yesterday, the Korean designer – and newly crowned winner of Netflix series Next in Fashion – was stopped in the street by a fan in New York. She has flown into the city to attend a cocktail party being thrown by the streaming service and its fashion partner Net-A-Porter in honor of, well, her. Fans of the show will rightly suspect that all this attention sits rather uncomfortably with Kim, whose humility and humor won over audiences from the very first episode. Despite beating 17 other hopefuls to secure the top prize – $250,000 worth of investment, plus the opportunity to have her winning collection stocked on Net-A-Porter – she remains remarkably level-headed. “I’ve always worked really hard on every element of my collections, from developing the concept to designing prints and ultimately bringing it all to life. I put my heart and soul into my work and that’s what I’m going to continue doing,” says the 32-year-old designer.

Having wrapped the series five months ago, Kim has been busy producing her collection, but admits it didn’t feel as if her life had undergone a major shift until the show was released on January 29. In the weeks since, it has gone stratospheric, which Kim concedes is “pretty exciting”. However, the success of the series also means the spotlight is now squarely on the Seoul-based designer. Before taking part in the show, this kind of pressure may have overwhelmed the immensely talented yet introverted Kim, but she credits the process with instilling her with the confidence to believe in herself. “I’ve grown so much. After completing an entire collection in three days, I know I am capable of anything. The timing was so tough, but it made me fall in love with design all over again.”

Kim might be effusive about fashion, but her trajectory hasn’t followed the traditional path. She chose to study design at university because it was the closest she could get to fine art. Studying at Seoul’s Samsung Art & Design Institute, she learnt intricate techniques and the business side of the industry, but it didn’t stir her creativity. It was a deep-seated desire to explore that side of herself that compelled Kim to pursue a master’s degree in design at the illustrious Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. It was here, under the tutelage of designer Walter Van Beirendonck – a member of the fabled Antwerp Six – that she developed a true fervor for her craft, and honed a distinct aesthetic, a kind of future-facing take on traditional femininity.

MINJU KIM ‘Next in Fashion’ season one winner