Koeun Park Interview
STORY BY ERICA K. LEE, PHOTO BY JOHAN SANDBERG
Issue 7,
Fall 2006
Performance
"I always believed in 'one client' who would give me all the reason to make 'one cloth'—that one client to stay in the business. This is my faith,” responds Koeun Park when asked about the name of her company, Factory of Faith. Few designers today can claim to be as conscious of the dynamic between consumer and creator.
For Park, it’s all to do with sticking to your beliefs. After years of experience working in the “band-wagon system” of fashion, she launched her own line, Forme 3’3204322896, in pursuit of a more personal approach to design.
The name Forme 3’3204322896, pronounced “Forme d’expression,” is created by decoding numeric orders that make up the “Helvetica-Fraction” font.
Much like the clothing it represents, the name is about conversion and individuality. Garments should be able to stand on their own and at the same time “evolve, as the owner’s life does,” Park says. “The numbers can be anyone’s own interpretation. I wanted to leave it up to their own imagination, like the numerous forms that will be produced each season, or year, or decade.”
Her unique approach to fashion may have grown out of her childhood aspirations of becoming a scientist or architect. “I love building up anything from flatness… Whatever has a mass can be distorted and elaborated into an unexpected volume. It’s scary to watch a plain rectangular piece of cloth drape itself into a wild tornado.”
That scare, however, bred a fascination that eventually led her to a Bachelor’s Degree in Fashion Design at Seoul National University and then to the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne in Paris.
For Park, going to Paris was a new beginning and a fresh approach to her work: “Moving away from Seoul was like fleeing from the conventional standard of life in every angle… By the time I was finishing up my major in Seoul I was very fascinated by French haute couture. I wanted to start all over from zero.”
After two more years of studying fashion at the Ecole, Park apprenticed at such maisons of haute couture as Christian Lacroix and Nina Ricci. In 1998, she moved to Milan where she started out as the associate designer of Giorgio Armani Black Line. In just five years, she worked her way up to senior designer but yearned for a change of pace. When she was offered the opportunity to work with Donna Karan on her main line collection, Park decided to move to New York City in 2002. A few years later, fed up with the commercial industry, Park set out to start her own line and packed up once again. She chose to base her company in Umbria, Italy: “
love the creative vibe and the nature here.”
All the moving around may seem tiring, but for Park, traveling is in her blood. Her parents worked on power station construction in developing countries and, growing up, she lived in both Seoul and Kuwait. By adapting to such different atmospheres, she gained much of the perspective that led her to such a worldly existence: “Mingling with kids from all over the world…must have helped me to get away with the different lifestyles of all those cities I chose to live in and move on to.”
Perhaps her childhood experiences have contributed to her wanderlust. “I am ‘bored’ by everything around me that lingers more than a week,” she says of herself. “I am still in search of a place to be my final home someday.” The scenery may continue to change for Park, but her faith is firmly grounded.
from Theme Magazine online
