As you have probably heard, one of Korea’s most famous fashion designers Andre Kim (born Kim Bongnam) has passed away. There are many stories on the Internet, including this one and this one. Some pictures of Andre here.
For years, Andre was best known to too many people for his strange personal style, in the big white outfit with the painted-on hair. (I quite like this photo, showing Andre shopping at a silk shop):
But in fact, back in the 1960s and ’70s, he was a rather dashing dude. Plus his clothes were great.
For the past 20 years or so, Andre concentrated on a pretty ornate, spectacular style:
But, while always somewhat theatrical, Andre’s fashions started out much more reserved. If you want to get a sense of what his fashions were like originally, here is a video from 1963 featuring a fashion show of his in the Bando Hotel (starts about halfway through).
– Here is an Andre Kim fashion show from Christmas 1964 (it is the whole video).
– In this video of a Pierre Cardin fashion show from 1981, you can see Andre himself, still looking elegant, sitting with Patti Kim at around the 15 second point.
– Here is an Andre Kim show from 1987. By this point, he had discovered his signature white, puffy outfit (at 43 sec).
(Btw, I could only get those videos to play on Firefox).
Anyhow, very sorry to hear about Kim’s passing. He was a really important figure in Korea’s fashion and art world for a long, long time.
UPDATE: I just found Antti Leppanen’s old post about Andre Kim. Great post! Lots of information about why Andre changed his name (two times) and his role in the Shindonga “clothing lobby” scandal of 1999.
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