by Finding South Korean designer Rejina Pyo, 41, grinning on the fourth floor of the Soho Revue gallery is something to behold. Dressed in her own beige, pleated skirt, striped white shirt, burnt orange sweater vest and cobalt blue adidas Sambas, she is actively curating exhibitions 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 is a huge achievement.
Why? Because keeping a fashion brand afloat in London today is an expensive, bloody and often damn-near impossible task. The retail infrastructure is crumbling, ambitious shoppers are getting closer to going the way of the dodo, and casualties are mounting. Leading luxury retailer Matches Fashion, one-time high street leader Ted Baker, and outfitter of the rich and famous, The Vampire’s Wife – have all fallen into administration in the past year. The remaining brands are crowding R&E.
Despite this, Pyo is still standing. We’re just a stone’s throw from her own store on Upper St. James Street, which opened in 2022 and is currently packed with her signature style of wearables that has attracted an extremely loyal customer base. “It’s been 10 years but it feels more like 20,” she says. “I understand how incredible it is to be a completely independent business at this status. It’s amazing to love and stand here.”
In fact, many of them would never have guessed. When she graduated from Saint Martins in 2011, London Fashion Week was more lights, bone-thin models and Christopher Kane gel jackets than anything more demure. “He was classy,” says Pio. “It really felt like there was no place for the things that I love and do – it wasn’t really women’s wear that you wanted.”
Some insiders promoted her subtlety and sophistication as boring, unadventurous and simple. Well, the joke is on them. It became her superpower, as there were so many around her sketching wild looks on silver birch-like performance figures sooner than any paying customer. “It doesn’t make sense to me to do that,” she says. “When I’m in the design process, I think about myself, my friends, and all the inspiring women around me. [I also] think of many things.” For example? “Can you really eat dinner?”
Pyo has steadily built a coterie of real women—high flyers in the arts, interior design, even investment banking—who swear by her stark use of color, sculptural silhouette frocks and playful incorporation of lace, taffeta and chiffon (start dresses at £395 tops £145 and skirts £250;
“Real” stands against slebs who borrow in search of a performance, which makes Pyo, if not really then really, an eye roll. “I’m not really worried about dressing someone up on the red carpet and objectifying this person,” she says. “I’m much more interested in someone on the street actually working, walking around, wearing the pieces. So many people say to me, ‘Oh my God, this is one of my favorite clothes I’ve ever owned.’ That’s what I strive for.”
She now lives in north London “far away” with her husband, chef and broadcaster Jordan Bourke, and their two young children. But if you met Pyo, who was born and raised in Seoul, when she came to the UK in 2008, you might not expect her to swim rebelliously against the current.
“I came with very little English, and I studied under 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 sharp tongue. However, one lesson stuck with Pyo: “Do what you do and do it well and there will be people who get you.”
In later years, she “did it backwards; building my business before I did the show or anything … slow wins a race”, she says. Her catwalk debut didn’t come until 2017, when she took over London’s Quaker Center on Euston Road. This was followed by eight more shows, including one at the Olympic London Aquatics Centre. The last one came in September 2022.
She began working on plans for a store in the pandemonium, after she had passed away with the runway model. She then took “what I understand was a big risk”, and went with bricks and mortar. “It was really scary. It’s expensive – but I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.” It took its business model towards direct-to-consumer and away from the wholesale system which is “very much in the hands of the retailers” and which became a superstition as institutions like Matches went down. That is not to say that everything is rosy. Companies House shows that the label’s net asset position fell sharply in the year to April 2024; however, “the shop is within my control”.
She still does four collections a year, but wants to cut that back soon because “there’s so much stuff out there, I don’t think we need four”, and she’s focused on on expanding to a wider lifestyle offering. And Pyo doesn’t stop at the idea of moving to a big house, either, even though he sees it as “like marriage. I’m careful.” Instead, she favors one-off collaborations, most recently with Mulberry this September. She notes the lack of women filling the top fashion jobs, saying, astutely: “It’s completely unfair.”
For now, however, she is focused on finishing her exhibition. Called As She Is, there are “female artists that really inspire me”. Along with works by Galician-born sculptor Ángela de la Cruz and British painter Chantal Joffe, she is excited to present Korean antiques collected by her mother. “There’s a basket that’s four generations old, but it’s like a lunch box where they used to carry food,” she says. “I grew up around these things at home, but when I saw them with fresh eyes, I realized how incredible they are.”
As our conversation winds down, she begins to discuss a Korean personality test she recently took. “A person with a capital P has no plan, and a person with a capital J has everything planned 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 out a long time ago.
“As She Is”, Curated by Rejina Pyo, 23 October to 2 November, Soho Revue, sohorevue.com
