Fashion lover's diary by Junghyun Yoo

Welcome back to Fashion Lover’s Diary. I’m Junghyun.

Today’s guest is Lauren Pyes (@blend_in_stand_out). By day, she works at Harvard University. By night, she hunts for rare pieces from Marc Jacobs’ tenure at Louis Vuitton, a collection she affectionately calls the “Marc(hive).”

You may have met Lauren in her written interview on True Fashion Lovers, Episode 57, “Work in Progress.” This time, we sat down for a conversation to go deeper and to catch up on what may be the most special year of her life: her first Instagram post, New York Fashion Week, a March 20th she still can’t quite believe happened, and a photo with Anna Wintour that her mom now uses as a lock screen.

Let’s step into the next chapter of her living archive.

In this episode, we explore:

🧥 What the 16-Year-Old Would Hear: Why Lauren would tell her younger self to keep following what makes her heart race, not what holds the most value, but “what makes me feel most like me.”

🧥 Whimsy, Romance, and Spring 2007: The collections that reminded her of the moment she first fell in love with fashion, and the sense of play she has carried with her ever since.

🧥 The Hunt vs. the Wearing: Why she keeps the rarest face mask for the right occasion, and how a yellow Damier suit became her lucky suit, from her first Instagram post to the day she met Marc.

🧥 The Shirtdress Chase: Six of the eleven colors found, five to go, and why a rising market just means hunting more strategically.

🧥 Dressing Like a Puzzle: How she keeps an inside joke with herself in a conservative workplace without being the loudest in the room, and why she loves keeping work and fashion separate.

🧥 New York Fashion Week: A week that began with doubt and ended with a feeling of “leaving home,” plus a project with someone from her admiration list that she can’t share yet.

🧥 March 20th: Her birthday, the one-year anniversary of her first Instagram post, the “Marc by Sofia” documentary, and the moment Marc Jacobs walked out, all in one day.

🧥 LEGO and the Quiet Hours: How building sets gives her a break from the screen and helps outfit ideas surface.

🧥 Finding Joy, Finding Community: The Anna Wintour photo at the Vogue Vintage Market, how fashion gave her a reason to smile in a hard season, and her advice for anyone too shy to share a passion: use social media to truly connect, and show genuine interest in others.

Listening Note 🎙️✨

This episode is an audio conversation with Lauren, recorded online in English. Press play, settle in, and enjoy the warmth of her laughter and storytelling.

Read the Full Written Interview 📖

If you haven’t read Lauren’s first chapter yet, her written interview is live on my Substack: True Fashion Lovers, Episode 57: “Work in Progress”: Lauren Pyes and Her Marc(hive). It covers her first Louis Vuitton boutique visit in Paris, the pieces closest to her heart, and her three-word style: “Work in progress!”

Thank you for turning to the eighth page of my diary.

See you in the next chapter! 🧥

If this story inspired you, subscribe to the podcast and share this page with a fellow fashion lover whose wardrobe is a work in progress. 💗

Welcome back to Fashion Lover’s Diary. I’m Junghyun.

Today, I’m sitting down with Lee Hyejin, the designer behind YILEE. She studied menswear in London, completed her Master’s in womenswear at the Royal College of Art, and now builds her brand in her Seoul studio, one collection at a time.

Her work begins with a relentless questioning of familiar forms. She reinterprets Futurist sculpture through hand-knitted metal frames, and turns charity-shop shoes into her signature Yeti Boots. She deconstructs what we know, shifts it slightly, and reassembles it into something entirely new. Art theory has a name for this, “defamiliarization,” but she had been practicing it by instinct long before she learned the word.

Let’s listen to designer Lee Hyejin talk about her journey, her admiration for Rick Owens, and her wish to see YILEE become a genre in its own right.

In this episode, we explore:

🎀 The Rick Owens Effect: The designer who pulled her back to fashion whenever self-doubt hit, and why she respects him so deeply that it sometimes feels like despair.

🎀 Twisting the Familiar: How “defamiliarization” became the engine of her design process, from Boccioni-inspired metal frames to the pieces that keep her curious.

🎀 Sustainability, Honestly: Why she avoids overproduction even when making samples, mixes in deadstock fabrics, and upcycles shoes found in London charity shops.

🎀 Stage, Studio, and Tight Deadlines: What custom looks for K-pop artists taught her about her own limits, and what she brings back to YILEE.

🎀 Petite and the Slow Build: Why the diffusion line was the right decision, why she refuses to rush or over-expand, and the artist she dreams of dressing someday.

🎀 Why Are You Doing This Work? Her advice for emerging designers, and her hope that YILEE will one day be seen as a genre rather than a label.

Listening & Viewing Note 🎙️✨

This episode features a candid conversation with designer Lee Hyejin, recorded in Korean in Seoul.

Read the Full Interview

The full written interview is already live on my Substack as [K-Fashion Archive: 0 to 100] Vol.19: YILEE Lee Hyejin. It includes her thoughts on Collection 05, the YILEE Petite line, her hopes for collaborations, and more.

Thank you for turning to the seventh page of my diary.

See you in the next chapter! 🎀

If this story resonated with your heart, subscribe to the podcast and share this page with a fellow fashion lover. 💗

🌺

Welcome back to Fashion Lover’s Diary. I’m Junghyun.

Today, we are visiting the tibaeg showroom and Collective 951 in Samcheong-dong, Seoul. I sat down with Cho Eunae, a designer who has spent 23 years translating human emotions and nature into beautiful clothing.

The name tibaeg comes from a simple tea bag — steeping in warm water to create something rich and wonderful. Instead of making loud clothes just to show off, she designs with a deep love for the person wearing them, creating quiet connections through colors, flowers, and gentle silhouettes.

Over more than two decades, she has navigated domestic crises, international trade shows from Paris to New York, and the balance of being both a mother and a designer.

Let’s step inside her showroom and listen to designer Cho Eunae talk about her 23-year journey, her philosophy of love, and how true beauty deepens over time.

In this episode, we explore:

🌺 A Name That Steeps: Why “tibaeg” — a tea bag slowly releasing its color in warm water — has stayed the exact right metaphor for a brand built to make the wearer more beautiful, not the other way around.

🌺 The Paris Turning Point: The season the brand nearly disappeared, and how a Colette pop-up and the freedom to finally design her own way became the confidence she still leans on today.

🌺 From Camellia to Water Lily: How 26FW’s camellia and the coming 27SS’s water lily are two chapters of the same idea — staying beautiful and unbothered, whatever the water underneath looks like.

🌺 Building Seoul’s Own Colette: Her hopes for Collective 951 in Samcheong-dong as a gathering place for kindred brands — and what’s coming next at the Shinsegae Daegu pop-up.

🌺 Designer, Owner, Mother: Her honest reflections on carrying all three roles at once, and why she believes enduring quietly, season after season, is its own kind of winning.

Listening & Viewing Note 🎙️✨

This episode features a raw, insightful conversation with designer Cho Eunae recorded on-site at her Samcheong-dong showroom in Korean. Take in the authentic atmosphere of the workshop and the resonance of our conversation.

Don’t Miss This 📍

If you’re in Korea, don’t miss the special event by tibaeg and Collective 951 at Shinsegae Department Store in Daegu, running from September 18th all the way to October 25th!

It brings together a curated selection of designers from Seoul, Singapore, and Milan — so be sure to check it out.

The Full Written Archival Interview

The full written interview will be published in a few days on my Substack, [K-Fashion Archive: 0 to 100] Vol.18. Please stay tuned for the upcoming story!

Thank you for turning to the sixth page of my diary.

See you in the next chapter! 🌺

If this story steeped warmly in your heart, subscribe to the podcast and share this page with a fellow fashion lover. 💗

👠

Welcome back to Fashion Lover’s Diary. I’m Junghyun.

Freedom, found in five centimeters. In our fifth podcast episode, we step into the quiet, disciplined world of Lee Seojung (@seojeongly) — the designer behind Finoacinque, the Seongsu-dong shoe house built entirely around a single, self-imposed rule: no heel above five centimeters.

Sitting among rows of leather and half-finished lasts in her atelier, surrounded by the artisans who have shaped shoes for thirty and forty years, I spoke with a designer who has never once treated her 5cm boundary as a limitation — but as the very thing that forces her to think harder, look closer, and design better.

In this episode, we explore:

👠 Not a Restriction, But a Standard: Why Seojung insists 5cm was never a ceiling to work around, but a fixed point that sharpens every other decision — toe length, strap width, the curve of a last.

👠 The Atelier as Family: How working shoulder-to-shoulder with Seongsu-dong’s veteran technicians — led by Kim Han-joon — turned a supplier relationship into something closer to kinship, and why she believes that closeness shows up in the finished shoe.

👠 Made in Korea, Worn Around the World: What international buyers in Paris and Florence responded to most — not just the silhouette, but the fact that design and production live under one roof.

👠 Building a House That Outlives Its Founder: Her honest reckoning with an aging generation of master craftsmen, and the AI-assisted project she’s quietly building to carry their decades of hand-knowledge forward — so the making doesn’t disappear when the makers retire.

👠 A Message to the Next Generation: Her advice for designers starting out — that knowing what you won’t do matters as much as knowing what you love, and that endurance, not perfection, is what lets a brand become a genre of its own.

Listening & Viewing Note 🎙️✨

This episode features a raw, insightful conversation with designer Lee Seojung recorded on-site at her Seongsu-dong atelier in Korean. Take in the authentic atmosphere of the workshop and the resonance of our conversation.

The Full Written Archival Interview

If you want to read the full written conversation and see the Finoacinque world in detail — from the Mod-look thesis that started it all to her hopes for the next hundred years of the house — the full piece is available right here on Substack.

👉 Read the Full Written Interview: [K-Fashion Archive: 0 to 100] Vol.17 FINOACINQUE Lee Seojung

Thank you for turning to the fifth page of my diary.

See you in the next chapter. 👠

If this story showed you how true freedom is completed within five centimeters, subscribe to the podcast and share this page with a fellow fashion lover. 👠💗

🩷

Welcome back to Fashion Lover’s Diary. I’m Junghyun.

In our fourth podcast episode, we step into the vibrant, unapologetic world of BELLA (@taeko_offical) — also known to the world as PINK MONSTER BELLA.

On a cool morning in Seoul, just hours before her flight back to Tokyo, I sat down face-to-face with a woman who spent ten years disappearing into grey as an “ordinary housewife,” and then decided, at age 40, that she would never hide again.

Today, at 63, she moves through the world head to toe in pink — not as a passing fashion trend, but as a living philosophy of survival and self-reclamation.

In this episode, we explore:

💖Throwing Away the Grey: Why putting on pink for the very first time at age 40 wasn’t just a style change, but a life-saving declaration that she was allowed to enjoy her own life.

💖Rei Kawakubo as Inspiration: How Comme des Garçons taught her that beauty exists outside traditional rules, and what it means to build a “Pink Monster” identity on freedom rather than approval.

💖Living Honestly on the Street: Overcoming ten years of depression and turning public gazes into raw confidence — realizing that being seen is not vanity, but proof of survival.

💖Dressing for Her 100-Year-Old Self: Bella’s vision for her 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond, proving that age is never the end of a story, just another colorful chapter.

💖A Message to the Hesitant: Her powerful advice for anyone around the world who is afraid to show their true self or waiting for permission to live fully.

Listening & Viewing Note 🎙️✨

In this special video and audio recording, Bella shares her raw, powerful answers in Japanese, followed by my short audio reflections in English. On-screen English subtitles are provided in the video so you can feel the true emotional resonance of that Seoul morning.

The Full Written Archival Interview

If you want to read the full written conversation and explore the complete Q&A and visual journey, the full written piece is available right here on Substack.

👉 Read the Full Written Interview: [True Fashion Lovers] Vol.50 “Pink Is How I Take My Life Back” — Bella’s Pink Rebellion

Thank you for turning to the fourth page of my diary.

See you in the next chapter. 👠

If this story warmed your heart, subscribe to the podcast and share this page with a fellow fashion lover.💗

“The result may look like one person’s name, but the process was never made alone.”

🌊

Welcome back to Fashion Lover’s Diary. I’m Junghyun.

In our third podcast episode, we’re diving into the eleventh chapter of the K-Fashion Archive: 0 to 100 project. My guest today is Park Joonmin, the founder of DUCKDIVE — a designer who didn’t come from fashion school, but from a factory floor.

The Story Behind the Name

Before we even started recording, he asked me, half-joking and half-serious: “Is it really my turn already?” That hesitation says everything about how he sees himself, even after a decade of building DUCKDIVE from the ground up.

He left an Electrical Engineering degree at Dongguk University after one semester, telling his parents: “Let me try what I actually want to do until I’m twenty-eight.” He didn’t run toward fashion — he’d already been walking there for years, working weekends in Myeongdong. The name DUCKDIVE comes from a surfing technique: not fighting the wave head-on, but ducking beneath it and coming out the other side still moving forward.

In this episode, we explore:

Learning from “Uncles” and “Aunts”: How two decades alongside the factory owners, cutters, and sewers who taught him the craft shaped everything DUCKDIVE stands for today.

The Biggest Decision: Why turning DUCKDIVE from a wholesale brand into a full runway collection after COVID felt like the highest-stakes choice of his career — and why he kept the name.

Designing From Conversation, Not a Sketchbook: How mountain biking chats, football talks with dancers, and everyday people’s routines become DUCKDIVE’s actual design language.

Team Over Ego: Why he calls himself a “co-creator” instead of a CEO, and insists on sharing the stage with his wife and co-designer Yeo Jihye and longtime designer Park Joohyun.

The Full Written Archival Interview

If you want to see the full visual journey — the runway looks from Seoul Fashion Road, the DUCKDIVE Sports Team uniforms, and the complete conversation — the full written piece is available right here on Substack.

👉 Read the Full Written Interview: [K-Fashion Archive: 0 to 100] Vol.11 DUCKDIVE Park Joonmin

Thank you for turning to the third page of my diary.

See you in the next chapter. 👠

If this story warmed your heart, subscribe to the podcast and share this page with a fellow fashion lover.

“The form can change, but the core stays the same.”

Welcome back to Fashion Lover’s Diary. I’m Junghyun.

In our second podcast episode, we are diving into the seventh chapter of the K-Fashion Archive: 0 to 100 project. My guest today is the unfiltered, fierce, and brilliantly creative Sejin Park, the mastermind behind the brand SEJINIST.

This conversation was recorded live in Seoul, and it is 100% in Korean. Why? Because you simply cannot translate her chaotic, raw wit without losing the true vibe.

The Story Behind the Rebellion

It starts with a moment of fury — during her exchange student days in Paris, she was selected to represent her school at a local exhibition. She made a piece centered on Hanbok. The brochure clearly said “Hanbok.” And yet, every Western visitor who walked past called it “Beautiful Japanism.”

Something in her snapped. She came back to Korea and built a brand.

Today, she runs an incredibly unique creative world. She reads traditional folklore, hand-draws every single graphic motif herself, and then hacks high-tech AI technology to push the limits of digital fashion design. She calls herself a “glorious lunatic,” and she lives exactly as she designs—with zero filters and absolute honesty.

This isn’t a polished, rehearsed conversation. It’s loud, funny, a little unfiltered, and completely her.

In this episode, we explore:

The Core of K-Fashion: Why tradition isn’t a boring old thing stuck inside a museum glass case, but a living, breathing culture meant to be enjoyed.

Hand-Craft meets High-Tech: How she connects the human touch of hand-drawn Korean folklore with the futuristic world of AI collaboration.

The Spirit of ‘Heung’ (흥): Bringing the raw, playful, and slightly unhinged energy of Korean humor into the global fashion scene.

Finding Your Own Truth: Why she went to grad school to bridge the gap between street sensibility and academic logic.

The Full Written Archival Interview

If you want to see the stunning visual journey, her gorgeous hand-painted artwork, and the full collection archives we talked about during the show, the complete written piece is available right here on Substack.

👉 Read the Full Written Interview: [K-Fashion Archive: 0 to 100] Vol.07 SEJINIST Sejin Park

Thank you for turning to the second page of my diary.

See you in the next chapter. 👠

If you love fashion stories that are raw, honest, and deeply human, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and share this page with a fellow fashion lover.

Step into a wearable time machine with curator David Song of VNTG.DEPT as we explore the raw energy of 90s American archives and the soul behind the hunt in our very first in-person episode.