H&M announces collaboration with designer Rok Hwang

Born in Korea, raised in Texas and educated in the UK, Rok Hwang’s style is intriguing. It is smart, deliberate, elegant, timeless and iconoclastic all at once. His garments have an experimental essence. The resulting garments are conceptual and even avant-garde, yet eminently refined, fit for purpose and pleasing to wear. After designing for some of the most acclaimed names in women’s fashion, Hwang founded her eponymous label, rokh, in 2016 and began showing at Paris Fashion Week just three years later.

Together with H&M, Hwang has created a collection that deftly reconsiders and subverts key components of classic professional attire. It comprises pieces for men and women, with double-layered trench coats, dresses with detachable hems, corset tops, reworked trousers and denim, a soft floral print top and pleated skirt set with matching gloves and tights, logo underwear and T-shirts, two-tone graphic metallic jewellery and fun officewear-inspired accessories, such as a briefcase bag and an accordion file handbag.

rokh H&M explores the complexities – and possibilities – of tailoring: Hwang incorporates additional layers into his garments, fuses and duplicates pieces, and takes elements from one style and adds them to another, as with the gabardine dress. Garments can be layered, altered and even worn inside out, and many feature detachable and adjustable elements such as hook-and-eye hems and buttoned seams. These are interactive details, not simply decorative; they invite experimentation, allowing the wearer to make the styles their own, imbuing each piece with uniqueness.

“I always try to make my collections as timeless as possible, and one way I do that is with customisable details,” Hwang explains. “I’ve seen people wearing the panels of our signature multi-button trench coat inside out, in original and unique ways that I never imagined when I first came up with the design. Seeing how people interpret my clothes in their own way is one of my greatest pleasures, and I can’t wait to see it with this fun and dynamic collection for H&M.”