BEAUTY: Clothing--Juun J.

Korean Modernist Juun J. likes to play with scale and at Paris Fashion Week, his SS '17 collection was blown up...and then duly shrunk down. Like fellow designers Rick Owens (here) and Demma Gvasalia at Balenciaga (here), he knows that coupling an inflated silhouette with a clinging piece creates tension. Good tension.

For this show, Juun J found inspiration in the G-suit, a garment with pressurized pouches that are inflatable with air or fluid, worn by fighter pilots and astronauts to enable them to withstand high forces of acceleration. Perhaps this idea of inflation and decompression accounts for the swing in scale and volume of the garments themselves...including an inventive nylon bomber jacket equipped with a built-in parachute!

The olive green color and lacings were the elements from the classic G-suit brought into Juun J's ultra-cool collection called Covered. The name of the collection on laced sweatshirts kicked off the show and then it made an appearance backward, along with other cryptic phrases: "Nothing stays covered," "Discover the covered," "Covered in mood," and most poetically, "Never get covered by another darkness. Illuminate your own light." Also of note is the double waistband. Other designers have employed this detail but I don't think I have seen it succeed as well as how Juun J shows it here: a higher khaki waistband peeks up over dress black or pinstripes, dress black peeks up over dark denim, and denim peeks up over olive drab. It's a great effect. Nothing stays covered...

http://www.juunj.com/