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If Soo Joo Park looks a little familiar, it might be because you’ve seen her on the cover of Vogue Italia. Or walking the runway for Chanel, Moschino, and Fendi. Or in global ad campaigns for Tom Ford, L’Oreal, and Bvlgari. Over the past decade and a half, the Korean-born (but primarily American-raised) model has carved out a lane as someone designers turn to when looking to lend a little edge to their collections: With her bleach-blonde hair, striking 5’10” height, and razor-sharp cheekbones, she can make even a classic Chanel tweed suit feel somehow renegade.
With her new EP No Ghost, however, Park is hoping to become not just a face you might recognize, but a voice you might recognize too—by bringing that rebellious streak from her runaway appearances into the recording studio. While Park has made forays into music before—whether by releasing a cover of a ’60s Korean rock song in 2021, or performing live at a Chanel Métiers d’Art show under the moniker Ether—this time, she’s reintroducing herself under her own name.
“When I first started making music, I really didn’t want to compromise in any way, and I wanted to step away from what was ingrained, at least in my mind, of who Soo Joo the model is,” she says. “And then as I continued, I realized that these are all just parts of who I am. I overthink a lot, so I had to say to myself, Okay, take a step back. It’s just me. I’m making my own music, and Soo Joo can be my name for that as well.”
On No Ghost, Park takes an unusual constellation of sonic references—everything from ’50s country pop to ambient Japanese music to shoegaze—and distills it into five sumptuous slices of alternative pop, from the glitchy sensuality of “Kiss Me” to the thumping, ’90s-inflected club banger “Take It Off.” What unites them is their sense of otherworldliness: the looping melody of “Running Water” sounds like a kind of ancient chant, while on “Phuket,” the playful production and intricate percussion (courtesy of experimental composer Eli Keszler) also features snatches of birdsong Park recorded in the jungle. “It’s a little bit of back and forth between something a little more intimate to something a little more bold… and then back to melancholy, which is pretty much my life,” she says, laughing.
Part of the reason for the EP’s long gestation process was the time she needed, as a self-taught musician, to hone her creative tools a little. “I think there’s a sense of playfulness and unabashed boldness that can come with not being too trained,” she says, citing an anecdote she read about a strange noise on the guitar Billy Corgan discovered by accident, but which ended up becoming the anchor for The Smashing Pumpkins’ beloved classic “Mayonaise.” “I might have a limited set of skills, but I’m going to play with those all I want. You can use your disadvantages or shortcomings to your biggest advantage.” (You get the sense that Park is underselling herself slightly, given the impressive roster of musicians who jumped to collaborate with her on the project, from experimental electronic producers like Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke to indie legends like Dave Sitek.)
Park is also no stranger to an unexpected career pivot: It was after graduating with a degree in architecture from UC Berkeley and moving to San Francisco that she was first scouted as a model, and she’s also appeared as an actor in the Wachowskis’ Netflix series Sense8. But her first love, she says firmly, was music. “It’s always been an intrinsic part of my life,” she explains, describing herself as a “timid” child who found confidence performing as part of her high school choir and glee club. Having felt pressure from her parents to choose a “serious” degree, she gravitated towards architecture for its balance of creativity and practicality (and, to keep her parents happy, its high employability). But her academic background has ended up seeping into the music, too; even if in unexpected ways. “If you think about it, architecture is really about designing spaces, and in music, you’re really designing soundscapes, which are their own kind of space,” she notes. “And now that I’m trying to produce and make electronic music, it’s definitely about building things and gets extremely nerdy in some ways, which appeals to the architect in me. I think it all goes hand in hand.”
So too does her career in fashion feed back into her music. “I’m a very visual person, so if I m thinking about a specific song, it’s about, Where do I see this? Where do I see this being played? Is it in the car late at night when you’re driving through the woods, or is it on the runway?” (Sometimes the connections she draws between fashion and music are even more literal: Park points to the numerous friendships she’s struck up with musicians after they DJed or curated the soundtrack for a runway show she walked in.) But when it came to styling the looks for her album artwork and visuals—on which she worked with fashion-favorite creative directors M/M Paris—she wanted to ensure they didn’t overpower the backstory she’d constructed around the record. “I tried to keep the fashion a little more nondescript,” she says of outfits referencing ’90s minimalism and including recent designs by Luke and Lucie Meier for Jil Sander. “But I suppose even when you’re doing that, you re also making a statement…”
To craft the rest of the record’s visual world, she also collaborated with the artists Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, having been inspired by their conceptual digital art piece from the turn of the millennium, Annlee, an anime character they purchased from a specialist Japanese company, and who they then invited multiple artists to “embody.” Eventually, they transferred the copyright of the character back to the virtual Annlee herself, ensuring she could never be revived again. “At the end of it, there is a sense of hope and regaining of authorship, which I loved,” Park says.
Having rediscovered the artwork while visiting a Parreno retrospective at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul a few years ago, Park begged the curator for Parreno’s contact; after reaching out to his gallery, her message was forwarded to the artist and he reached out to her with curiosity. “He wrote back saying, ‘I don’t know what you want, but hello!’ And then our conversation just began from there, and I had to explain what I was doing and why the Annlee storyline is so important to me.”
And what was it, exactly, that appealed? “If you listen to the Philippe Parreno video, she says, ‘I’m a product and I was designed to drop anywhere into a storyline.’ That is, in a sense, what I do as a model. I am who I am, but I’m hired to jump into any storyline that’s given to you by the client or the art director or photographer, and I perform. And then my necessity is derived from that—someone else’s storyline. She just really struck a chord with me, and the whole thing is presented with a sense of detachment and melancholy that I really liked as well.” She adds, “That’s not to say modeling is terrible. It’s amazing. It got me to where I am. I’m very grateful.”
After all, there’s no aspect of the process Park is more excited about than bringing the EP to life on stage—and you can chalk that up to her runway experience as much as her musical chops. “I have a feeling that when it’s live, it will really come together and sound amazing,” she says, breaking into a wide smile. “But who knows? I mean, it’ll be an adventure, for sure. I have so many years in front of the camera modeling and doing choir as a kid, so I always really look forward to performing. That high I get from being on the runway, I feel that from being on stage as well. I love it. That’s the thrill seeker in me.”
