This Isn't a Fashion Show, It's Five Years of Sunbleached Clothes (EXCLUSIVE)
Fashion is an industry obsessed with newness. It’s a dizzying business where a never-ending conveyor belt of new collections, new trends, and new creative directors, each one supposedly bigger and better than the last, feeds the demands of mass-consumerism. It’s hard to keep up. So designer Jiyong Kim doesn’t.
"We hope to [make] people question what can be considered valuable and to examine their own relationship with beauty and consumption," the LVMH Prize semi-finalist told Highsnobiety a couple of years ago, later adding he has no interest in "mass sales, scaling, creating a big team, [or] being stocked in a ton of shops."
Whether he likes it or not, JiyongKim, the eponymous brand which Kim founded in 2021, is getting more attention than ever, though, and with that comes opportunities. Most recently, he was invited to show his latest work at prestigious Italian menswear trade fair Pitti Uomo but, instead of only showing what’s new, Kim also showed what's old.
This year marks his fifth in the biz, and the designer’s opening an exhibition rather than throwing a fashion show. It’s part retrospective, part new-season showcase, and Highsnobiety was there to get a first-hand look.
Old experiments displaying JiyongKim’s signature technique, fabrics authentically sun-bleached over several months allowing nature to gradually imprint twisting patterns, appear alongside fabric swaths, behind-the-scenes images, and campaign books. This exhibition is a comprehensive look into what’s made him one of menswear’s most exciting new names.
Kim also included a look at what’s to come. New creations include 34 long purple mac coats, identical except for being exposed to sunlight at 3-day intervals, arranged in order of the extremity of the sun’s bleaching. And there are new techniques, like allowing microorganisms such as fungi to grow atop a textile.
Grounding it all is JiyongKim’s new sneakers, PUMA’s sporty CELL GEO 1, which originally arrived white before Kim built patina through exposure to dirt, mold, and moisture. It’s Kim’s most extreme shoe yet, something highlighted by the displays presenting all of his past footwear endeavours, from the Spring/Summer 2026 deconstructed PUMAs to the sun-bleached Clarks Wallabees.
It's the old next to the new. And when all are brought together, it gives a full look into JiyongKim's world.
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