Namkeon Cho is a menswear designer-maker from South Korea. He is exploring the relationship between garments, human beings and himself. With reinforcing craftsmanship, he constantly polishes the fundamental skills of pattern cutting and making. He also extends his boundary to leather crafts. With stubborn artisan vision, he has the desire to control the whole process from scratch. His works are motivated by the philosophical contemplation that human beings has infinite possibility. He constantly gives fundamental questions like the reasons why we exist. These curiosities are extended to his works. Garments he created are considered as one of the living creatures to him. He believes that the garments have questions about their existence, and the wearer would be given the same questions. He believes that it makes a deep and direct connection between him and the wearer. This small stream makes the protesting stream against the current fashion trend.
Namkeon Cho
Existence
'Garmentise' the human body
His works are started from his contemplation. He gives himself questions about existence: Why do we exist, how do we exist and what is the meaning of existence? The journey to find out the answer is the act, which is from simply drawing to making something.
He considers garments are our second skin. They have been evolving not only for the function of protection but also for the way of expressing individuals' identities. In other words, garments are considered as other existence as human beings are evolving. Then, the act of making existence can be a guideline for his questions. His works are based on the human anatomy for integrating these perspectives.
His obsession with making, which might be stubborn, allow him to have a better understanding of the construction of garments and pattern cutting. With the function of wearable, the created garments are subdivided following the construction unit of the human body.
The obsession extended to the material: leather. To him, leathercraft is another challenge because of the required high levelled skill. Leather has the unique characteristic that it is changed its surface and shape following our behaviour. It looks like human beings like we are getting old.
Fascinated by such characteristics, with dark emotion, he expresses our changeable and worn-out appearance in the fabrics by using the method of dyeing and painting.
The garments he made are the other existence. Through his hand, they are delivered with a question of their existence to the wearer. The garments would be given their own life through the interaction between the garments and the wearer. To him, it is a way of connecting with others.
Finally, Through the connection, he would like to define his own answer and believes that this small stream could be a protesting the current fashion industry: fast fashion. He dreams of the spread of wearers who are looking for a valuable existence rather than looking for uniformed garments.
