Seoul Fashion Week's runway now has a checkout button
Seoul Fashion Week opened on Tuesday with its runway split between two venues for the first time, and with the clothes on one of them made buyable by phone before the show has finished.
Thirty-one brands will stage runway shows and presentations across Dongdaemun Design Plaza and the World Park at Lotte World Tower in Jamsil, with roughly 100 more taking part in a trade show, the Seoul Metropolitan Government said in an announcement on 27 August.
The Jamsil site is organised with Lotte Department Store. The contemporary labels showing there on Saturday will send out pieces carrying QR codes and dedicated links, according to the Korea Herald, and both connect to Lotte's online mall.
The city has split its biggest fashion event between a design museum and a shopping mall. Only one of them has a till.
Seoul Fashion Week has spent most of its history being measured against the European calendars it wanted to join. The Jamsil runway is measured against Musinsa.
The split runs through the whole programme. DDP keeps the industry half, 17 designer runways and eight presentations, opened on Tuesday by Rerhee, a label that showed at Paris Fashion Week for three consecutive years through 2026. Jamsil gets an outdoor runway the city described as aimed at contemporary labels, shoppers and tourists.
The trade show sits at DDP and runs Wednesday to Friday, with buyers from Printemps, Samaritaine, United Arrows, Club21 and HBX. United Arrows is Japanese, and Tokyo's own fashion week is running the same six days.
Dunst takes the Jamsil runway on Saturday with a solo show, followed by a joint runway from General Idea, EBM and Mahagrid. Dunst works with about 100 buyers in some 30 countries, which makes it one of the few Korean contemporary labels with a wholesale business worth the name.
That is the case for the QR codes, and it is a real one. Korean designer brands have historically converted domestic attention into domestic sales and very little else. A runway that ends at a checkout is a distribution channel for labels that cannot get a Paris showroom, and Lotte is the largest one available.
What it is not is a buyer's market. A department store's mall reaches the customer already inside the department store's ecosystem, which is the audience Seoul designers have always had.
The commercial layer extends past the clothes. Kimhekim opens the Lotte World Tower runway on Thursday with its first show at a Korean fashion week, ten years after Kim In-tae founded the label and seven after he launched it internationally in Paris; adidas is supporting the collection and the production, and is running a separate pop-up with a Stan Smith Seoul Edition and a package styled by the designer. At DDP, 18 brands including Pulmuone and D'Alba are taking part in a food, beauty and wellness street.
The week closes on Sunday with NCT marking its tenth debut anniversary. There is a curated runway, an exhibition of stage costumes, and a flea market selling about 3,000 items of the group's stage wear. Proceeds go to programmes for women, youth and culture.
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