“I don’t really like to talk about myself,” says Gi Tae Hong. “I’m a bit introverted, and I prefer the clothes to speak for themselves.” And speak they do, with the same soft-yet-confident voice as their creator.
I’m meeting the 32-year-old designer in the Paris Market Week showroom for his brand Gajiroc, which is tucked behind a worn blue door on Rue de Marseille close to Le Marais. A twenty-minute bike ride from the main venues — Palais du Tokyo, the Grand Palais — it feels worlds away from the buzz and fuzz of Paris Fashion Week.
There, global luxury brands and conglomerates noisily fight for attention, no cost spared; here, in make-do showrooms they can barely afford, independent designers slowly build labels on pure conviction and face-to-face relationships. And while not on the official calendar, they are arguably even more crucial to the direction of fashion, driving taste from the bottom up through high-end craft and everyday wearability.
Gajiroc’s cozy showroom, hidden at the end of a peaceful courtyard, is also Gi Tae’s home for the week; he sleeps in the mezzanine above the kitchen. The air smells of burning palo santo and hand-picked tea, which is poured for me by his girlfriend. Smooth jazz plays in the background. Gi Tae isn’t in a rush. He offers me a chair and asks how I’ve been. After twenty minutes, I suggest we look at the new collection, and he patiently walks me through it down to the smallest detail, from button holes and yoke constructions to the irregular weave of a deadstock Italian wool fabric. I glance at my watch and realize almost an hour has passed. Time seems to move more slowly here – incidentally, or maybe not, it’s exactly what gajiroc means in Korean.
The brand, launched in 2022, is the definition of a one-man operation, a phenomenon key to the rise of good clothes. Other examples of this phenomenon include designers like Keith Henry, Oliver Church, and Evan Kinori, with whom Gi Tae trained as a pattern-maker in California. Everything about Gajiroc, from the fabrics and seams to the showroom invitations, reflects a deeply considered, sometimes idiosyncratic personal choice.
Shy as he is, Gi Tae is uncompromising, going to great lengths to get things exactly the way he wants. “I only go for the best I can afford,” he says, even evidenced by the cameras he carries with him wherever he goes. The tall, kind-hearted designer cuts all the garment patterns himself, travels to Japan and Italy to source high-end fabrics, visits local manufacturers in and around Seoul to ensure the quality of finished pieces, and aims to sell to only a single shop per city, whatever the demand. Recently, he even discontinued his most popular style, a loden Casentino wool fleece jacket, because he didn’t want Gajiroc to be defined by a hit garment.
Meanwhile, his girlfriend JiYeon Han, still in business school, plays a significant role in running the brand, far beyond pouring tea. The 26-year-old travels with him to Paris to set up the showroom, designs the tags, and manages communications with factories and suppliers, especially when tough decisions need to be made. “I just do anything that’s needed for his mental health,” she chuckles.
Gi Tae isn’t your typical designer. In fact, at first glance, he doesn’t seem made for fashion at all, especially in the context of the corporate, celebrity-filled, influencer-dominated spectacle that is Paris Fashion Week. A former helicopter crewman in the Korean army, he doesn’t like parties, doesn’t desire attention, and doesn’t tell clients how to wear or think about his designs. It’s a relief to be around him in his showroom, and experience something true and personal amid impersonal pomp and ego-driven flash. The fact that he turned Gajiroc into a brand stocked at tastemaking boutiques like New York’s C’H’C’M’ shows that none of that is necessary to create collections of luxurious yet grounded clothes. Real clothes. Good clothes.
It took Gi Tae some time to arrive here. “When I first started, I thought I needed to do all categories in every possible size to become a proper brand,” he says. “That was naïve, of course. Since we’ve narrowed down to key silhouettes, we’ve become much more mature.” Gajiroc’s Fall/Winter 2026 collection runs to about thirty pieces, from an incredibly heavy six-and-a-half pound navy melton wool peacoat to English tweed jackets and Italian cashmere sweaters. The approach that informs each of them is deceptively simple. “I always reinterpret military and workwear silhouettes, and play around with color and handfeel,” says Gi Tae. “For this collection, my go-to colors are brown and olive, and I’ve tried to give every piece a certain fuzziness that I really like.”
After Gi Tae talked me through the collection, John Ro, the Korean-born, Dutch-based designer of De Dam Foundation, joined us for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. The music was loud, and at our table, there was the usual talk about import taxes, fashion in-crowds, and the perils of running an independent brand. All the while, Gi Tae sat mostly silent, a bit monk-like, still wearing his vintage military coat and orange beanie. Gajiroc, like its designer, is indifferent to the noise of the world. Or Paris, at any rate.
