A car airbag, a hiking shell and a costume from Resident Evil make unlikely neighbours in a fashion archive. Yet these are among the references shaping South Korea’s experimental fashion scene. Over the past decade, independent Korean labels have moved beyond conventional streetwear, drawing inspiration from industrial materials, outdoor equipment and science fiction. Through unconventional construction, technical fabrics and unusual proportions, these designers are rethinking how everyday clothing is made and worn.
1. POST ARCHIVE FACTION (PAF)
Dongjoon Lim and Sookyo Jeong founded POST ARCHIVE FACTION in 2018. In its numbered collections, Right, Center and Left describe how far a design departs from a familiar shape. Two pieces from the Fall/Winter 2024 collection show the distinction. On the 7.0 Jacket Center, pockets project unevenly from the body. On the 7.0 Technical Pants Left, deep pleats spiral around the leg and meet at a cutout. Seen in profile, the folds give the trousers a jagged outline.
2. SAN SAN GEAR
SAN SAN GEAR began in Seoul in 2019 with an interest in how outdoor clothing could work in everyday life. Music has been part of that world since its early collections. The spring 2023 Mercurial pop-up closed with a performance by the Korean band Silica Gel to mark the release of their single of the same name. On the clothes themselves, the team often reconsiders where a fastening belongs. A fall 2024 puffer zips at the side of the hood. A spring 2025 hoodie buttons along a curve across the chest.
3. FFFPOSTALSERVICE
Jonathan Choe imagines FFFPOSTALSERVICE’s collections as instalments in an ongoing science-fiction film. For Fall/Winter 2024, he named Umbrella after the corporation in Resident Evil and looked to the layers worn by Alice in Resident Evil: Extinction. A sleeveless coat with a zip down the back could fit beneath another jacket. The wide cargo trousers carried over into the following spring’s ELI collection, where one pair had a three-way zip.
4. XLIM
Dohee Kim studied film before founding XLIM in 2021, and calls its collections Episodes. The first included a washed zip jacket with exposed stitching and contrasting panels in a textured pearl weave. By Episode 7, XLIM was coating nylon with wax for a crackled finish and pairing sheer fabric with opaque layers. One close-up in the lookbook shows a pale sleeve lifted to reveal a yellow underlayer through an open zip.
5. KANGHYUK
A car airbag comes with its own seams, holes and manufacturer’s markings. Kanghyuk Choi saw possibilities in those details after encountering a deployed airbag at a crash scene. He collected airbags from a repair shop and began making clothes with them. Choi and Sanglak Shon carried that approach into KANGHYUK, preserving barcodes and stitching on pale jackets and trousers. For Spring/Summer 2023 they also worked with yellow aramid, a strong, heat-resistant fibre.
