BLINDNESS

Kyu Yong Shin (left) is the first Korean designer to have made it to the semi-finals of this year's LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers. He started Blindness in 2013 and was joined by furniture design major Ji Sun Park (right), two years later. The brand has rapidly built a reputation for elegant menswear.

Your brand is only three years old. How would you describe its DNA?

We are more experimental than many other Korean brands and maybe we are also more stubborn. The stubborness of the brand is one of the reasons for its success.

How did you come to be chosen so fast for this global pop-up?

Because we had lots of good feedback and press from overseas and that made us really look forward to this event.

What did the overseas press like about your brand?

We think they liked the unique style. And they said that made us stand out from other Korean designers they were looking at. Also, our menswear had an elegant style which they said was very different from anything else on the market. The press seemed to like that a lot.

What’s the best and worst thing about Korean fashion?

It has geographical reach. But then, most original ideas come from Western cultures. While we have reach, there is perhaps a limit to it.

How important is Instagram to your brand?

We are using social media to promote our brand, but we're still at this point getting to know the system. There's also the feeling that where technology changes we need to change accordingly, too.

At what point do you choose music to go with your show?

We do everything else first. Design, finish and then try to match a song with our style.