For spring-summer 2027, EENK has named its collection “E for Evoke”. The letter is one in an alphabet that Hyemee Lee works through season after season, and, twice over, one in the name of her Maison. It remains to be seen whether it holds in dresses made to ripple.
A press in Seoul
Hyemee Lee grew up in her parents’ printing house in Seoul. They still set metal type there by hand, sort typefaces, handle paper and run the presses. The designer kept from it a taste for lettering, the weight of paper, ink settling on the page. She also kept a conviction: to make is to inscribe.
The Maison’s name bears this trace. The two Es of EENK come from the letters of her first name and her family name.
An alphabet for a calendar
The Letter Project governs the sequence of collections: each takes the name of a letter and opens a chapter. According to EENK, each letter is an architecture of straight lines and curves, the union also found in the traditional Korean hanbok. The silhouettes are built in that spirit, with negative space weighing as much as form.
This season, the letter is E. It is also the one that begins the Maison’s name, and it appears there twice. Nothing indicates that this was intended, but EENK’s alphabet here returns to its starting point.
What the letter says about the garment
The Maison places the collection on the side of the freedom that fashion gave women in the 1920s, reread as a way of dressing to enjoy life and express oneself. The silhouettes are relaxed and softened by knots, ribbons and bodice details. Flowing dresses and skirts follow an undulating rhythm, while shirts and outerwear give the impression of layered pieces. The neutral palette receives soft mint and powder pink. Mother-of-pearl buttons and floral-patterned silks add a luminosity that the Maison compares to light touches of white.
Two constants run through the seasons. The double-breasted jacket returns in every collection, like a leitmotif. The roses, knotted, coiled or stylised one by one, take up a traditional Korean motif and pay tribute to La Vie en rose by Édith Piaf.
Where to look
A letter is read by its fullness and its voids, and that is the criterion of judgment for this season. The double-breasted jacket is the most architectural piece in EENK’s repertoire: its line is clean, and the letter reads in it effortlessly. The rippling dresses pose the real problem, since the material is mobile there and the negative space changes with each step. A knot or a ribbon can fix the line there or dilute it. An alphabetic system imposes a rule, and a rule is judged over its seasons: what E keeps of the method, and what it changes.
The reasoning leads to this. If the letter stays legible where the fabric moves, the Seoul printing house ceases to be an anecdote of origin and becomes a cutting tool. Otherwise, E for Evoke will remain a title. The Maison states the ambition of becoming the first truly global Korean fashion house, and that ambition will pass through this precise point. An idea of a letter does not travel abroad if it holds only in words.
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