Who made the furniture and photographs placed in the RECTO Hannam store?
When entering the store, the furniture, photographs, and flowers catch the eye before the clothes. Since it is a clothing brand's store, one wonders whose hands shaped it.
Although it is a clothing brand, a furniture craft artist handled the furniture, a photographer handled the photography, and different creators contributed drawings and flower decorations as well.
The place where you first encounter the makers is not inside the store, but in front of the door. What hangs in the exterior window is not a finished work, but a mold used when making art furniture, showing the making process before the finished outcome.[1] The new flagship store in Hannam-dong itself is a space recreated together with artist Kang Woo-rim.[2]
Stepping inside, the wooden furniture and objects are finished with lacquer and matched to the same color, and these are also works by artist Kang Woo-rim.[3] Lacquering is an old finishing method of repeatedly applying thin coats of lacquer tree sap and letting them cure. The person who initiated this collaboration with the goal of creating a space where people can linger for a long time was Jung Baek-seok.[4] The photographs were another person's role. Working together with Kim Jae-hoon from the same crew, they placed RECTO's unique colors over photographs taken at Le Corbusier's atelier.[5] The drawings on the walls were painted in a single day with light purple paint by illustrator Gwon Cheol-hwa, and the flower decorations throughout were completed by VMD Hwang Ina.[6] This approach remained the same even when releasing sunglasses made together with Effector.[7] Instead of placing the new products on display shelves, they organized a black-and-white photography exhibition with photographer Mok Jung-wook and unveiled them at the store.[8]
Furniture, photography, drawings, flowers, exhibitions. The spots differ every time, but the people who filled those spots all came from outside fashion. hmmm, looking at the names of the people who created the store, the roster for this space reads closer to a list of neighbors who live alongside each other than a list of contractors.
Under what terms and procedures these collaborations took place, and whether there are plans to continue them in the future, could not yet be confirmed.