Fashion is no longer confined to dressing bodies but to generating discourse. In this context, the South Korean label OPEN YY bursts onto the scene with one of the season’s most incisive proposals for Autumn/Winter 2025. Under the title Workwear Spirit, the collection unfolds as a manifesto that questions, reinterprets, and re-signifies the codes of the uniform – from military to workwear – in order to pose a historically resonant question: why do women wear menswear?
Far from offering a literal answer, the collection becomes a field of experimentation where functionality is transformed into poetics. The uniform — that device historically designed to discipline bodies, erase singularities and homogenise identities — emerges here as a surface for resistance and reappropriation. What was once a symbol of hierarchy, control and repetition is reconfigured as a vehicle for freedom, agency and personal style.
In a present where post-streetwear has displaced the logic of hype with a more critical and mature language, OPEN YY proposes a dialogue with the past that shuns nostalgia. Workwear Spirit is not a mere aesthetic appropriation of work clothing, but rather a reflection on what it means to inhabit it in a time marked by job insecurity, flexibilisation, and the constant tension between identity and productivity. The result is a collection that moves between the rawness of the uniform and the sophistication of detail, between the industrial and the ceremonial, between the functional and the emotional.
The wide, almost overflowing silhouettes are a gesture of freedom against the restrictive patterns of classic menswear tailoring. The Hooded Jersey Dress distils sporting comfort into an urban dress that dismantles the binaries between casual and elegant. The Layered Knee Socks Pants hybridise codes, defying the traditional coherence of the garment. The Cargo Pocket Mini Dress confronts the tension between femininity and functionality, while the Thigh-High Ballet Boots stage a powerful contradiction between discipline and sensuality.
Here, militarism is reactivated not as a celebration of order but as a space of subversion. The Loop Effect Hoodie, with its looping print, introduces a repetitive motif verging on the hypnotic, as if camouflage had mutated into a digital glitch. The Multi Pocket Safari Jacket pushes pocket engineering to the extreme, questioning the boundaries between utility and excess. The Worker Pet Club Long Sleeve inscribes the figure of the labourer onto the body. The Crinkled Pocket Jacket speaks of memory and wear, while the Satin Cargo Bomber elevates the industrial imaginary towards an unexpected sophistication.
OPEN YY’s philosophy comes through clearly: comfort and movement over rigidity; play in knitwear as an escape from the severity of the uniform; deconstruction as a critical methodology in the face of inherited sartorial systems. Layering becomes a visual and conceptual language: layers that not only add volume and versatility, but also recall that identity is never univocal — it is built through accumulation, fragments, and contradictions.
In strategic terms, the collection will be unveiled in two stages: the first drop on 28 August and the second on 5 September. A cadence that responds not merely to the commercial logic of staggered consumption, but to the desire to extend the narrative — to make time itself an active component of the collection. Each release functions as a chapter, a fragment of a manifesto that does not reveal itself all at once, but demands sustained attention.
But beyond its aesthetic architecture, Workwear Spirit reads as a political gesture. In a context where feminism continues to question the codes of dress, the appropriation of menswear is no longer a transgressive act in itself, but a reminder that gender hierarchies are still inscribed in clothing. OPEN YY turns that gesture into reflection: what was once a masculine imposition here becomes a feminine choice, shifting the power of the garment towards the one who inhabits it.
At the same time, the collection engages in a broader debate on the culture of work in the post-industrial era. The uniform, a symbol of discipline and productivity, appears at a moment when the boundaries between personal and professional life are blurred, when remote work, precarity and infinite flexibility redefine the body’s experience of labour. Workwear Spirit does not respond with romanticism, but with a critical gaze: workwear as a metaphor for a present that demands movement, adaptability and resilience.
Ultimately, OPEN YY asserts itself as one of the most relevant voices in contemporary Asian fashion. Not only for its ability to create memorable pieces, but for its capacity to situate fashion within a terrain of thought. Workwear Spirit is not simply a collection: it is a declaration of principles that turns the utilitarian into the poetic, the functional into the political, and the everyday into a space of emancipation.
You can now shop the collection at open-yy.com or ssense.com.
Open YY looks to the past to dress the present with “Nostalgia, Nostalgia!”.
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