Jinwoo Choi and Yeonjoo Koo are the husband-and-wife duo behind menswear label J Koo—Choi dishes to Tatler about her fashion journey
Finalists for the 2016 International Woolmark Prize, South Korean designers Jinwoo Choi and Yeonjoo Koo are the husband-and-wife duo behind menswear label J Koo. The two met while studying menswear design at Central Saint Martins and are known for taking traditional British Savile Row tailoring and applying it to their classic-with-a-twist womenswear collections.
Since its launch in 2010, J Koo has become one of the most popular brands to show at Seoul Fashion Week, and the designers collaborated with Adidas on its spring-summer 2020 collection and were selected to be among Fashion Asia’s 10 Asian Designers to Watch last year. Here, Choi tells us all about their journey.
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How did you first come to realise you wanted to work in fashion?
My family has always been quite artistic; my father paints as a hobby, my mother is always making clothes or curtains and my older sister is an artist, so I have always been surrounded by fashion and art for as long as I can remember.
What was the first roadblock you had to overcome?
We had to deal with financial issues when we started the brand and even a few years after launching. At the start of the business, I hadn’t yet figured out how to coordinate financial planning with the fashion schedule.
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