Favourite Piece

My Favourite Piece: Young n Sang

Building a collection is a very personal process for each and every designer—and many items have their own story and deeper meaning. In our new series, My Favourite Piece, we ask designers about a particular item in their collection, aiming to shed light on the connection between designers and the clothing they craft. First up is Young N Sang, Seoul based design team who chose an item from their most recent collection, Wing it.

Why did you choose this piece?

In this collection, all of the clothes are made by repurposing vintage clothing. This piece especially has a special meaning among the other clothes in this collection because it connects our parents' memories of youth to our own memories of youth. This piece was mostly made by our own parent's old clothes that they wore when they were younger. When we first stumbled upon the clothes, we felt as if we were looking at our parents when they were at the height of their youth. Although our parents grew up and came of age within a different generation, we thought their images of youth would be same as our present images of youth. Through this piece, we discovered an empathetic connection between the two seemingly disparate memories of youth between the two generations, an idea that we successfully reflected in this piece. All of this special meaning and deeper connection to our families is the main reason why we chose this piece. 

What makes it stand out amongst the collection?

In this piece, we highlighted one of our main techniques: patchwork. It's a technique that keeps original clothing patterns intact during the design process.

Explain the origins of the design. What were your initial inspirations?

We enjoy listening to American pop music, especially "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore. In the song, he is picturing himself enjoying popping some tags in thrift shop with only 20 dollars, which is enough for him. We were impressed at his improvisatory styling from thrifty and flexible spending. We thought it would be very cool to make our collection in that inexpensive but improvisatory way.  This idea drew us to the theme of this collection: Wing it! 

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Why did you choose the specific fabrics, patterns, colors?

Our parents actually donated various check patterned clothing, which we loved being able to use. The quality of the clothing was great. However, the pieces were very old-fashioned and some of the colors of the clothing had faded.  We infused these elements into our collection, showing that old-fashioned style could be transformed into an effortlessly cool piece.

What is the story of this piece and how does it work to tell your collection's overall story?

We worked to collect a large amount of vintage clothing from our parents and many others in order to make this collection. Most of the clothes that we received were old-fashioned clothes that they wore in their youth. However, we thought each of the items intrinsically contained its own memory of that person's youth. Clothing, after all, is a reflection of a time and a person. It's a powerful storytelling tool. By patching parts of vintage, old-fashioned clothing into a modern, cool-looking masterpiece, we realized that fashion enables us to reform those obsolete fashion trends and enable them to be reborn into a new, unique fashion style. Wearing our pieces is not only just about wearing clothes, but it is also about sharing memories together.