Hyein Seo is a South Korean designer who launched her namesake brand in 2014 after graduating from the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. During her time at the academy, she developed a sharp visual language that merged its conceptual discipline with the raw urgency of youth culture. Her early collections offered an alternative uniform for a generation caught between fear and defiance, weaving together militaristic hardware, distressed streetwear, and ethereal touches of fragility.
Seo’s breakthrough came when Rihanna, always attuned to emerging talent, wore one of her pieces during Paris Fashion Week. The piece, an oversized “Fear” scarf from Seo’s Autumn Winter 2014 graduate collection (Her collection was picked to be presented at the VFiles Made Fashion show during New York Fashion Week.) The endorsement sent waves through the fashion world and instantly positioned Hyein Seo as a designer to watch. It also revealed her gift for turning clothing into emotional armor, merging the rough beauty of the streets with a fragile yet contemporary grace.
For her Spring Summer 2018 collection titled Don’t Deliver Us From Evil, Seo fused streetwear codes with a dark and macabre aesthetic. This marked a stark departure from the more youthful rebellion of her earlier work.
A standout piece from the collection is this layered linen lab coat, stained and weathered to evoke a sense of eerie, abandoned innocence. Faint academy crests and ghostly prints are hidden beneath gauze-like linen, appearing like memories half-erased by time. The fragile, almost decaying texture captures the heart of the collection. It is a meditation on corrupted youth, lost sanctity, and the quiet violence of growing up in a broken world.
