It’s a fall evening in Seoul, and a small group of Korean dancers dressed in traditional black and white robes are clanging brass gongs and chanting at the entrance to Wooyoungmi’s sleek new flagship. The crowd follows the procession through the imposing front doors and upstairs to a large space, where, on a table surrounded by pyramids of glossy persimmons, sits an offering of a pig’s head.
As the music crescendos, a line of guests offer up envelopes of money, which they place into the swine’s open mouth before bowing. A common ritual in Korea known as gosa, it is held to cleanse bad vibes and bring good fortune to new ventures. The occasion is timely: this is Wooyoungmi’s first standalone store in Seoul, and the onset of a retail strategy the label is betting on.
South Korea’s first global menswear brand
Youngmi Woo, the brand’s owner and founder, knows that fortune doesn’t come easy. A cool and collected 66-year-old, known in the industry as “Madame Woo”, she glides through the crowd in a sharply tailored black suit and large sunglasses. As CEO of Solid Corporation, which owns Wooyoungmi and its more conservative brother, Solid Homme, she is in charge of one of South Korea’s most powerful fashion houses.
Founded in 1998 as Korea’s first designer menswear brand, Solid Homme paved the way for Wooyoungmi, which launched in 2002 and became the first Korean label to show at Paris Fashion Week. The brand operates two stores in Paris, is sold across 24 countries with 70 stockists, and employs 150 people globally. In 2024, Solid Corporation reported revenues of €72 million, and sales for Wooyoungmi have shown steady annual growth of approximately 10% to 20% over the past few years.
Located in Itaewon, formerly home to US army barracks and now a cosmopolitan enclave, the new store’s location is part of a wider retail strategy to assert influence at home. “During the pandemic, I realized the need to have a place where you can physically and directly engage with the customers,” Madame Woo says, speaking from her expansive office in Gangnam. While Wooyoungmi shares space with Solid Homme at the aforementioned Seoul store, this is the first time the label (which also sells womenswear) will be merchandised alone in Seoul. Madame Woo sees it as an opportunity for the brand to shore up its identity there.
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Wooyoungmi has built a business through its Korean roots and international effort (the brand is officially known as Wooyoungmi Paris, which appears in all caps backlit on its storefronts and printed on its hoodies). “When I first started out [showing] in Paris, there was no perception of Korea as having high fashion,” says Madame Woo. Japan had already conquered that territory in Europe, and so the idea of a Korean designer was “unheard of at the time”, she says. “I had to really break the ground and start on my own.”
In the years since, Wooyoungmi has become a mainstay as one of the only Korean brands on the Paris schedule. The brand’s rise has also coincided with a global frenzy around Korean culture, namely K-pop, now a multi-billion-dollar export industry. “It’s quite unbelievable how phenomenally and dramatically Korea has changed over the years,” she says. “Our culture has really come to the fore on the international stage, and the perception of Korea as a whole has evolved. I’m proud that I may have had some contribution to that evolution.”
Around 60% of Wooyoungmi’s sales are domestic, with the other 40% originating abroad, so expanding the brand’s appeal across age and nationality is clear. As well as help from her millennial daughters Yoojin and Katie Chung (the latter was previously co-creative director of the brand), in recent years Madame Woo has also enlisted the expertise of Italian stylist Nicco Torelli and Danish fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen. “I don’t differentiate between the Korean customer versus international customers,” she says. “They’re all lovers of fashion, so what I focus on trying to balance is blending the very current trend with my own identity.”
Perfecting the home market
As Korean culture has enjoyed a global come up, so too has the pressure to stay relevant. All throughout Seoul, sexy flagships from newer Korean brands like Ader Error and Gentle Monster have popped up, highlighting the urgency of impressive retail space in the city to attract both tourists and locals. “Korean customers don’t let us rest. They’re constantly driving us to do hard work, and we need to be very consistent in pushing ourselves,” says Madame Woo.
Seoul, however, maintains the testing ground. “A lot of people living in Seoul are early adopters, so as part of our strategy, we wanted to have a store where we could address that audience and really communicate our brand positioning and authenticity,” she explains. The store will have a café on the fourth floor, emphasizing the importance of experiential retail in Seoul, and furniture designed by Madame Woo herself, shaped by abstract takes on the five senses: a side table shaped like a nose, and a chair like an ear.
“Consumers today don’t just engage with a fashion brand based on the garment, they really want to experience the space and the ethos of the brand,” she says. “This store is a whole package that tries to communicate with them on multiple levels.” This communication is key to surviving Seoul’s trend-driven retail culture, which Madame Woo hopes will set her in good stead on the global stage. The designer knows that fortune, like failure, comes in waves. “And I’ve seen many waves,” she laughs.
