We See All
Today I’m featuring the work of young designer Yun Qu and her fledgling label Videmus Omnia. She launched the label after graduating from the Fashion Institute Of Technology in 2016, where she studied Fashion Design .
She is passionate about music and explores this love through her work. Her SS19 collection, Misdirection, features tartan and deconstructed silhouettes heavily borrowed from punk (although unlike punk, you can expect to pay almost $7000 for a jacket). She only works with sustainable materials and she does not use leather or fur in her work. Sustainability is an important, and very admirable, aspect to her label.
I do love her work, but having started her business straight after graduation, I do feel there is a slight lack of polish present. By that I mean you can tell she is fresh out of school. And her hefty price tags have quite the sting. She has a shop where you can buy ‘haute couture’…ready made. If I were spending the guts of $7k on a jacket I would want that jacket made specifically to my measurements, which is really what you’re paying for when you buy haute couture, it’s not just about the time or materials used.
Haute couture is a term that just gets thrown around now to denote expensive clothing. Labels are hard to run and yes, making these kind of intricate pieces cost time and money however that doesn’t make it couture. A young designer with zero industry experience, and not just no industry experience but very little experience in garment construction, asking customers to pay such large sums of money is a big ask. If you go to Chanel to buy couture what you are buying is not just a garment created to your specific measurements, but you are also paying for seamstresses with decades of experience, you are buying heritage and tradition. None of those things are present when you buy from a young designer straight out of school.
We need to move fashion forward of course, and young designers are the future and should be nurtured, but there is also a lot to be said about respecting history, heritage and experience.
