It's remarkable to find South Korean designer Rejina Pyo, 41, grinning on the fourth floor of the Soho Revue gallery. Dressed in her own beige pleated skirt, white pinstripe shirt, burnt orange vest and cobalt blue Adidas sambas, she is busy putting together an exhibition to celebrate her brand's tenth anniversary. I challenge you to find anyone working in the British fashion industry who won't tell you that this is a momentous achievement.
Why? Because today, to put it bluntly, keeping a fashion brand afloat in London is an expensive, bloody and often damningly impossible task. The retail infrastructure is crumbling, ambitious shoppers are getting closer to going the way of the dodo, and the number of victims is piling up. Leading luxury retailer Matches Fashion, former high street overlord Ted Baker and the clothing store of the richest and most famous, The Vampire's Wife, have all gone into administration in the past year. The other brands are displacing A&E.
Despite this, Pyo is still standing. We are just a stone's throw from her own store on Upper St James Street, which opened in 2022 and is currently stocked with her signature style of wearable pieces that have attracted a very loyal customer base. "It's been ten years, but it feels more like twenty years," she says. "I appreciate how incredible it is to be a fully independent company with this status. To be loved and to be standing here - that in itself is amazing."
Indeed, many would never have guessed it. When she graduated from Saint Martins in 2011, London Fashion Week was more about blaring lights, paper-thin models and yellow Christopher Kane jackets than anything more subdued. "It was maximalist," says Pyo. "It felt very much like there was no room for what I like and do - something wearable for real women wasn't what you were aiming for."
Some insiders dismissed her subtlety and sophistication as boring, adventurous and simple. Well, the joke's on them. It became her superpower, as so many around her continued to sketch wild looks on illustrated figures that looked more like silver birches than any paying customer. "There's just no point in me doing that," she says. "When I'm designing, I think about myself, my friends and all the inspiring women around me. [I also] think about a lot of things." For example? "Can you really eat here?"
Pyo has steadily built up a coterie of real women - high flyers in the arts, interior design and even investment banking - who swear by her stark use of colour, sculptural silhouette dresses and playful incorporation of lace, taffeta and chiffons (dresses start at £395. ; tops £145 and skirts £250;
'Real' is opposed to slebs who borrow looks for a premiere, something that Pyo rolls his eyes at, if not actually then figuratively. "I don't really have a problem with dressing someone on the red carpet and objectifying them," she says. "I'm much more interested in someone on the street who is actually working, walking around and wearing the pieces. So many people say to me, "Oh my God, this is one of my favorite pieces of clothing I've ever owned." That is what I strive for."
She now lives in 'very far away' North London, with her husband, chef and presenter Jordan Bourke, and their two young children. But if you had met Pyo, born and bred in Seoul, when she came to Britain in 2008, you might not have expected her to swim rebelliously upstream.
'I came with very little English and studied with Louise Wilson [the fabled, late Saint Martins tutor]. She was Scottish and I didn't understand anything." Just as well; Wilson was known for her cutting tongue. One lesson stuck with Pyo: 'Do what you do and do it well, then people will find you.'
Over the next few years, she "did it backwards; building my business before I did the show or something... winning a slow race," she says. Her debut catwalk didn't come until 2017, when she took over London's Quaker Center on Euston Road. It was followed by eight more shows, including one at the Olympic London Aquatics Centre. The last one came in September 2022.
She had started working on plans for a store during the pandemic after becoming disenchanted with the runway model. She then took "what I understand was a big risk," and started working with bricks and mortar. "It was quite scary. It's expensive, but I think it's the best thing I've ever done. It shifted its business model towards direct-to-consumer and away from the wholesale system that "gives a lot of power to the retailers" and which proved to be a lifeline when institutions like Matches collapsed. That doesn't mean everything is rosy. Companies House shows that the label's net asset position has fallen sharply in the period to April 2024; however, "having the store really gives me control."
She still produces four collections a year, but plans to scale that back soon because "there's so much, I don't think we need four," and shift her focus to a broader lifestyle offering. And Pyo doesn't reject the idea of moving to a big house either, although he does "see it as a marriage." I'm careful." Instead, she prefers one-off collaborations, most recently with Mulberry in September. She does mention the lack of women in top positions in fashion, saying scathingly: "It's completely unbalanced."
However, she is currently concentrating on finishing her exhibition. It's called As She Is and features "female artists who really inspire me." In addition to works by Galician-born sculptor Ángela de la Cruz and British painter Chantal Joffe, she proudly presents Korean antiques collected by her mother. "There's a basket that's four generations old, but it looks like a lunch box that they used to carry food in," she says. "I grew up with these things at home, but when I saw them with fresh eyes I realized how incredible they are."
As our conversation draws to a close, she begins to discuss a popular Korean personality test she recently took. "A person with capital P has no plans, and a person with capital J has everything mapped out," she says. "I'm a capital P. I feel like I'm more of a fluid person, I go with the flow," she says. I'm not so sure. I wonder if she has all this planned out long ago.
"As She Is", curated by Rejina Pyo, October 23 to November 2, Soho Revue, sohorevue.com
