When asked how Seoul has changed in the last decade or so, one can simply follow the tourists, who once circled historical landmarks like the Joseon-era palace of Gyeongbokgung and now would rather make pilgrimages to the Gentle Monster store.
Since opening its first location in 2013, the cult Korean eyewear brand, founded by Hankook Kim in 2011, has become known for experiential retail spaces that feel more like art galleries than boutiques. Think: large-scale installations that blend organic and inorganic elements, both retro and futuristic. Mounds of soil and woven grass statues might live alongside a giant kinetic sculpture of a human head, for instance. In 2021, Gentle Monster raised the bar with Haus Nowhere, an experimental retail concept that opened its fourth location this week. But Haus Nowhere Seoul is unlike any that came before it, representing the culmination of the brand’s clever take on creativity and commerce.
By one o’clock last Wednesday, the furor had begun outside the new Haus Nowhere. For months, the building, which is also the headquarters of parent company IICOMBINED, had been the talk of Seongsu-dong, the industrial neighborhood once known for its warehouses and factories but now a prime spot for conceptual cafes and pop-ups.
Despite Seongsu-dong’s fashion-forward reputation, Haus Nowhere still stood out. First for its sheer size and mammoth structure, encompassing 14 floors of poured concrete sculpted into a Brutalist monument unlike any other in Seoul. Second, for the famous clientele flocking through its glass doors: Korean celebrities like actor Byeon Wooseok and brand ambassador and K-pop star Felix of Stray Kids, as well as overseas stars like Tilda Swinton and Hunter Schafer. The staff stood by, dressed in head-to-toe black despite the nearly 90-degree weather, and the crowd was already three rows deep behind the security cordon, waiting with signs like “Felix Kiss” written with black marker on sheets of white printer paper.
On the surface, Haus Nowhere is a multi-brand retail space for IICOMBINED, selling the company’s tightly curated collection of wares: sunglasses by Gentle Monster, fragrances by Tamburins, headwear by Atiissu, tableware by Nuflaat, and tea by Nudake. Yet passersby could easily mistake it for a modern art exhibition.
The first floor functions as a rotating space for new launches; when Haus Nowhere opened over the weekend, guests could try Tamburins’ new “Sunshine” and “Puppy” perfumes, sold in chic glass bottles or as scented objects shaped like leather-wrapped doggy bones. At the main entrance was an animatronic dachshund in chainmail armor, whose ears wiggled every so often. Up the escalator, the second floor is devoted to Gentle Monster and has amorphous robotics beside “the Painted Giants,” two larger-than-life statues marked with blue paint, sitting cross-legged with a contemplative mien. They are a favorite of FKA twigs, who flew in for the occasion. “They have a real calm and meditative quality, but it’s also very futuristic,” she remarked. “I feel that Gentle Monster are world-builders. The designs are obviously incredible, but they create a whole story and atmosphere and world around what they do, and it echoes the things I really like in music, as well.”
The third floor houses perfumes by Tamburins, knit cowboy hats and stocking caps by Atiissu, and the newly launched Nuflaat, which turns cutlery into fashion objects, like a bottle opener that resembles a tube of lipstick or a cake cutter shaped like the sole of a kitten heel sandal. There are more cyberkinetic sculptures here, as well as a fuzzy black chenille and tinsel rug hand-embedded with thousands of kitschy beads.
The showstopper of Haus Nowhere Seoul, however, is the Nudake Teahouse on the fifth floor. Plush drapes the color of pea soup extend from the exposed concrete ceiling, drawing focus to the robotic sculpture at the focal point of the room. The menu consists of Surrealist confections like The Lobster, a savory dessert shaped like a lobster tail and claws and made from an intriguing combination of shrimp bisque, lobster, chrysanthemum, sea salt, cucumber, chocolate cream, and aloe. A stick ganache filled with orange and cardamom, shaped like a partially smoked cigar with ash falling from its tip, is paired with The Mafia, which resembles a whiskey on the rocks but is in fact an exquisite black tea blend created by the in-house tea master.
It is at Nudake Teahouse that I sit down with founder Hankook Kim, who I’m told several times rarely gives interviews. Despite his imposing reputation, Kim is friendly and humble, arriving in a black Yohji Yamamoto top and pants and simple black eyeglasses. It is Kim’s firm guiding hand that has crafted the Gentle Monster universe, developed carefully over the last 15 years. One employee told me that their founder remains hands-on with all aspects of design, and his unique vision, resembling that of an auteur, comes through in each facet of Haus Nowhere. “I’m a CEO who oversees everything,” Kim says with a good-natured laugh.
Kim first purchased the plot in Seongsu-dong seven years ago and fussed over the design for the last six years, hoping to put a twist on the Brutalist architecture he loves. “For example, in movies like Blade Runner or the same for Tenet, there are a lot of Brutalist buildings that appear,” Kim says. “But I didn’t want to simply create the Brutalism of the past, but find a way to express this sort of Brutalism in a futuristic direction.” The details have been painstakingly considered. Pointing out an example, Kim taps one of the tables at Nudake Teahouse, which are the color of concord grapes and went through dozens of iterations, including burgundy and mustard, in order to find the right balance of past and future. Nearly every aspect of Haus Nowhere, from that hand-beaded rug to the Surrealist sweets to the large-scale installations like the “Painted Giants,” was conceived and created by in-house teams (about a thousand employees will commute to this new headquarters), which allows a degree of care and control that is hard to find in Korean companies.
The secret to the group’s success is much discussed, but one idea comes to the forefront: The startling amount of time and thought that goes into each project. “Our company’s process is to find the things we want to do, then prepare them over a long period of time to launch them properly,” Kim explains. It took two and a half years to prepare Nuflaat’s artfully eccentric dishes and silverware, while Atiissu’s hats spent about a year and a half in development; even the Nudake tea blends went through countless rounds of samples.
“Usually at minimum two years, up to three or four years is about how long we take to prepare,” Kim says. “We’re not geniuses, we’re hard workers,” he adds with another laugh. “But from the outside, you don’t know how long we’ve spent preparing, so it looks like it came out suddenly. It’s not like that.”
Time is a luxury not often afforded in Seoul, and this creative approach is counter to the country’s reputation for impatience and rapid action. Yet it allows Kim and his team to create works of astounding care and beauty, and for Kim to maintain the Gentle Monster worldview. “We do a number of brands, but the core of them is all the same,” he says. To this day, the contradiction embedded in the name Gentle Monster appears everywhere you look. “Contrast and balance are very important,” Kim says. “When you combine the wildness and the sophistication, that’s our company. If it’s just one or the other, I hate it. The wildness and the strange feelings it stirs, yet the sensitivity it has. That’s the core, and it’s my personality.”
“For us, the most important thing is not design, it’s emotion,” he says in sum. Surveying the teahouse, Kim says that amid the provocative art and objects, he hoped for Haus Nowhere to convey a sense of peacefulness, like an act of care for the customers who come there. “I like it here. I’m the type of person that always needs to find a peaceful moment,” he says. “My mind is a little more free. When I was younger, I just studied. But when I started the company, I became more free. ‘Oh, I really like things like this,’ I realized it much later. I think I’m a very lucky man because how many people in the world get to do what they truly love for a living?”