[VOD] Lee Sang-bong in Paris 2012 s/s

By Kang Sue-yon

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The 2012 spring/summer pret-a-porter collection of Lee Sang-bong, well known for integrating modern tastes with traditional Korean beauty to create fancy clothes with oriental elegance, opened on Oct. 1 at the Hotel Westin Salon Concorde, Paris.

The Prêt-a-porter collection is held for a week and 10 to 12 designers are invited by Mode a Paris based on their previous achievements.

During the IMF crisis in Korea during the late 1990s, Lee Sang-bong made it to Paris with the eponymous brand.

Lie Sang Bong- S/S 2012 Paris Collection from CultureM on Vimeo.

His first show was a collection in Paris in 1997.

Since 2002, he has been a regular at the "Paris Prêt-a-Porter". It was after "Who's Next" in Paris, 2006, where he showed designs with "Hangeul" (the Korean alphabet), that his brand gained a high profile.

His work was praised by international critics and buyers, and he was considered a designer with global competitiveness.

Lie's 2012 spring/summer collection started with a performance by dance crew PAC. To Lee Sang-bong, fashion is not just about clothes but a design of a whole lifestyle.

He always gives performances of new taste at the beginning of his shows. Through collaborations with artists from diverse genres he shows Korean-style performances.

The shaman dance at his debut show in 2002 caught people's attention, and another started with a performance by a famous calligrapher on the runway.

PAC is a b-boy team. They wore neon-coated costumes and masks, and gave a kaleidoscopic display under dim lightning. The organic movement and the feeling of neon color permeated into the clothes,.

This season the designer focused on "dancheong", which refers to multicolored paintwork on traditional Korean wooden buildings.

Regular patterns with five basic colors of blue, red, yellow, white and black, are painted on the walls.

A new feeling of neon is added to dancheong through the hands of Lee Sang-bong in this collection. Dancheong symbolically expresses the nature through an organic combination of lines and curves.

Lie reinterpreted this characteristic into modern graphic images by adding his unique structural feeling.

He expresses it in various images, mounted on architectural structures and printed on clothes in brilliant colors or in flat achromatic tones.

Dancheong expressed by laser-cut leather on simple structural silhouettes made for an unexpected harmony with that printed brilliantly on silky fabrics and sportily printed on leggings. The media and buyers were not sparing with their praise afterward.

The image of Lie Sang Bong collection at the "2012 Spring/Summer Paris Prêt-a-Porter" can be seen at his homepage.

The designer is busy preparing for the 2012 spring/summer Seoul collection on Oct. 20 after collections in New York and Paris.