Designer research/ Eudon Choi

// E U D O N

C H O I //

2017

WEARDY-TO-WEAR

A/W

EUDON CHOI

Born in Korea, EUDON CHOI initially trained as a menswear designer in Seoul, acquiring an in-depth knowledge of tailoring techniques and a great eye for detail. After 4 years of experience in menswear, he moved to London to attend the Royal College of Art's MA in womenswear.

Eudon was hired as a senior designer at All Saints a year before graduation and his RCA graduate collection was sold at London's Dover Street Market. In 2008 he became a senior designer at Twenty8Twelve before leaving in 2009 to launch his eponymous label.

Eudon's experience in menswear and womenswear enables him to merge the best of both worlds, using sartorial techniques and masculine cuts to shape the female form. His inspiration comes from intensive research into historical photography and sourcing vintage garments, focusing particularly on menswear detailing. He extracts the essence and aesthetic beauty he uncovers and reworks it. As a result the EUDON CHOI look is understated yet modern and meticulously constructed.

In 2010, Eudon was selected as one of Vauxhall Fashion Scout's Ones to Watch. In September 2010 he received both the VFS Merit Award – which enabled him to stage his first solo catwalk show off schedule at London Fashion Week - and the BFC/Elle Talent Launch Pad, a support program coordinated by Elle and the British Fashion Council.

In September 2011 Eudon was invited by Anna Wintour and Franca Sozzani to present his S/S 2012 collection at Milan Fashion Week in honour of THE VOGUE FASHION FUND and his success has continued, having been awarded with the Samsung Fashion and Design Fund and the LYCRAÂŽ Style Emerging Talent Award at the WGSN Global Fashion Awards in New York.

EUDON CHOI has an international appeal having been stocked in some of the world's most prestigious stores including Selfridges & Co(London), Browns Focus (London), Luisa Via Roma (Italy), Harvey Nichols (Hong Kong) and 10 Corso Como(Korea). His clothes have also appeared on the pages of Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Stylist, Marie Claire and Vogue.

Eudon lives and works in London.

// 出生在韓國，EUDON CHOI 最初作為首爾的男裝設計師進行了培訓，獲得了關於剪裁技術的深入知識和對細節的一個偉 大的眼睛。經過 4 年的男裝經驗，他搬到倫敦參加皇家藝術學院的女裝。 Eudon 在畢業前一年被聘為 All Saints 的資深設計師，他的 RCA 畢業生收藏在倫敦的 Dover 街市場出售。 2008 年，他成 為 Twenty8Twelve 的高級設計師，然後在 2009 年離開之前推出了他的同名品牌。 Eudon 在男裝和女裝方面的經驗使他能夠結合兩個世界中最好的，使用裁縫技術和男性剪裁塑造女性形式。他的靈感來 自對歷史攝影和採購復古服裝的深入研究，特別側重於男裝的細節。他提取了他發現和修復它的精華和審美。因此， EUDON CHOI 看起來是低調，現代和精心構造。 2010 年，Eudon 被選為 Vauxhall Fashion Scout 的 Ones to Watch 之一。 2010 年 9 月，他獲得了 VFS 優異獎 - 這使他能 夠在倫敦時裝週上舉行他的第一次個人時裝表演 - 和 BFC / Elle Talent 發射台，由 Elle 和英國時尚理事會協調的支持計 劃。 2011 年 9 月，Eudon 受到 Anna Wintour 和 Franca Sozzani 的邀請，在米蘭時裝週上頒發 S / S 2012 系列以紀念 THE VOGUE FASHION FUND，並且他的成功繼續，被授予三星時尚設計基金和 LYCRA ®風格新興人才獎在紐約 WGSN 全球時 尚獎。 EUDON CHOI 在世界上最著名的商店，包括 Selfridges＆Co（倫敦），Browns Focus（倫敦），Luisa Via Roma（意大利）， Harvey Nichols（香港）和 10 Corso Como ） 。他的衣服也出現在 Elle，Harper's Bazaar，Stylist，Marie Claire 和 Vogue 的 頁面上。 Eudon 在倫敦生活和工作。

AW17 ORNAMENT AND CRIME This collection featured a rationale as satisfyingly convoluted as many of its looks. Choi’s notes spoke of the architect Adolf Loos’s protominimalist essay “Ornament and Crime,” in which he apparently asserted that the imposition of decoration that must inevitably become anachronistic should be criminalized. Steady on, Adolf!

If Loos’s word were law, plenty in this collection would merit Choi’s immediate arrest post-show. That “so now, but bound soon-ish to be so over” fad for outerwear (attractive paneled and strappy parkas in gray, navy, and khaki) and knitwear (chunkily waffled) designed to be worn seemingly half-put-on was a recurring flourish. Some handsome leather pants in orange or black featured an oversize menswear shirt cuff at each leg that attractively altered Choi’s silhouette, but were surely indefensible under Loos’s law. And he rarely placed a button on the front of a look when it could be transferred to the back. Choi’s subtle blending of color and patterns (often rooted in menswear)—houndstooth check, Bengal stripes, blue shirting, gray flannel—sometimes had punchy results. A shirt in banker-bro pale blue with a buttoned-on matching scarf was worn with a paneled black leather skirt that featured a Loos-defying sliver of extraneous belt looping from its inhabitant’s left hip: The combination of two banal-in-their-ubiquity materials made both suddenly exciting.

Later in his notes, Choi talked about Loos’s Raumplan—the concept of contradicting rough-hewn stark exteriors with plusher interiors: This was subtly reflected in some satin-on-the-outside, silky-within layered and orchid-esque dresses, and in slightly fusty colorways near the end. If clothes are personal architecture with which we remodel ourselves every time we get dressed, then Choi offered plenty of pleasing facades to play with.

LONDON, FEBRUARY 18, 2017

by LUKE LEITCH

//

這個集合的特點是理性的令人滿意的複雜與許多它的外觀。崔的筆記談到建築師阿道夫·洛斯的原始主義論文“裝飾與 犯罪”，其中他顯然聲稱，裝飾必須成為不合時宜的，應該被定罪。堅持下來，阿道夫！ 如果洛斯的話是法律，在這個收集很多將值得崔的立即逮捕後顯示。這個“現在，但很快就會結束了”的外衣（灰 色，海軍和卡其色的有吸引力的鑲板和粗暴的帕卡帕）和針織服裝（chunkily 華夫）設計的磨損看起來半裝的時尚反復 出現。橙色或黑色的一些帥氣的皮褲，每條腿都有一個超大的男裝襯衫袖口，可以改變崔的輪廓，但在洛斯定律下肯 定是不可置信的。他很少在一個表面的前面放一個按鈕，當它可以轉移到後面。崔的顏色和圖案（通常植根於男裝） 微妙的混合 - 大方坯檢查，孟加拉條紋，藍色襯衫，灰色法蘭絨有時有很多結果。一件穿著銀灰色藍色的襯衫搭配一 條搭扣搭配的圍巾，飾有鑲嵌黑色皮革的裙子，這款裙子飾有從居民左臀部脫出的腰帶：無處不在的材料突然令人興 奮。 後來在他的筆記中，Choi 談到了 Loos 的 Raumplan--這是一個與更加內部的粗糙外觀相矛盾的概念：這種設計巧妙地反 映在一些緞面外，絲滑的分層和蘭花式連衣裙中，稍有乳白色的顏色。如果衣服是個人建築，我們每次我們改裝我們 自己穿衣服，然後崔提供了許多令人愉快的外觀。

Ornament and crime --- an essay and a lecture by modernist architect Adolf Loos

I have never been able to understand why cheap clothes are more likely to have gaudy or unnecessary ornament, while expensive clothes tends to be austere, or in fashion-copy terms, “timeless.” In the same way bottled water is often more expensive than sugar water, plain clothes are more expensive than the clown clothes you see at H&M and Charlotte Russe and other stores dedicated to disposable fashion. Is it planned obsolescence in cheap clothes, or is it that they are aesthetically worthless at the same time they become functionally useless? Is it a distinction derived from social capital, that allows those with expensive taste to appreciate minimalistic design, or that those with social capital don’t need to indulge in ornamental displays to make their identity felt, to communicate a sense of personality?

All of these reasons are suggested in architect Adolf Loos outrageous 1908 manifesto “Ornament and Crime,” an essay designed to infuriate fine artists, as it suggests they are decadent if not infantile, stuck in a primitive state of mental development. “The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use,” Loos declares, flatly rejecting the idea that lack of ornament implies an ascetic self-denial—and then proceeds to insult anyone who might disagree. For those who ornament their bodies with tattoos, he declares, “The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a degenerate. There are prisons where 80 percent of the inmates bear tattoos. Those who are tattooed but not are not imprisoned are latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats” (or postcollegiate hipsters). Of those who like to dress up, he wonders how they can stand to “walk about in red velvet trousers with gold braids like monkeys at a fair.” Of the impulse to paint, he explains that “Erotic excess” drives painters to make their marks on canvas, the way caveman marked walls and vandals graffiti lavatories. Those who look to the past in nostalgia to revive the accoutrements of past luxuries, he says “impede the cultural development of nations and humanity itself,” and are thus “criminals.” In response to the fallacy that planned obsolescence in fashion creates more work and thus propels the economy, he suggests that the Austrian empire be burned to the ground every so often so it could be the most prosperous nation in the world.

Loos accuses ornament of being a drag on the economy, wasting labor and artificially inflating the cost of things while adding no utility, subscribing to a pretty narrow utilitarian view of things and presuming a kind of rationality that we would probably fell straitened by. He compares ornamentation to “lighting cigarettes with banknotes.” It seems to me that the best way to relate to Loos now is to imagine him railing against the crowd of pseudo-artists and hipsters whose main art is the presentation of themselves. Behind much of Loos critique is the idea that ornament is a debased form of personal self-expression, a desperate form of self-promotion that taints all artistic practice,

reducing it all to advertisements for oneself. Loos critique becomes specifically grounded in class; he claims that the lower classes need ornament “because they have no other means of expressing their full potential,” whereas aristocrats have legitimate culture—Beethoven’s 9th and so on. According to Loos the aristocrat’s “individuality is so strong that it can no longer be expressed in terms of clothing.

The lack of ornament is a sign of intellectual power.” What this really means is that aristocrats have earned the liberty from having to make displays of their power; they’ve achieved a kind of hegemony whereby their natural practice—allegedly “unornamented”—seems like the pure, unfettered way to do things, the expression of intellect being used without distraction.

Rather than reflect some evolution toward perfect humanity that the higher orders have achieved, deornamentation is simply a matter of amassing cultural capital; our culture continues to place greater value on the subtler pleasures that require a grounding in education and leisure time over the more straightforward pleasures that require no such preparation.

Reading Loos, it becomes clear

that class provides the definition for what ornament is to him—it is those very markers of class difference, the rhinestones on the shirt or the tinted windows in a car or the tacky lawn ornaments in a yard. A lack of ornament is an attempt to make one’s taste invisible, and in a sense omnipresent, omnipotent.

//

Adolf Loos Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos[1] (10 December 1870 – 23 August 1933) was an Austrian and Czech architect and influential European theorist of modern architecture. His essay Ornament and Crime advocated smooth and clear surfaces in contrast to the lavish decorations of the fin de siècle and also to the more modern aesthetic principles of the Vienna Secession. Loos became a pioneer of modern architecture and contributed a body of theory and criticism of Modernism in architecture and design.

EUDON CHOI

AW17 ORNAMENT AND CRIME