Lee Jean Youn’s Strange Wedding Ceremony

PARIS–Korean designer Lee Jean Youn’s show, entitled “The Strange Wedding Ceremony,” wanted to shout out its theme: A white square sheet instead of a classical catwalk covered with flowers welcomed its audience. This, complete with organ music playing in the back, brought to mind old-fashioned wedding imagery.

Yet marriage clichés were rapidly riddled with questions: As the designer explained, his inspiration comes from the theory of Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra (“The essence of perfect wisdom”), and its idea that what is “form is emptiness, what is emptiness is form.” In other words, his aim was to explore the many contradictions and intricacies of love, rites, life, and death.

This questioning materialized through a constant search for contrasts, some subtle, some osé. The first model, donning a bridal-inspired silhouette, wore staple white tights, cream PVC heels, a top in salmon, a white floral headpiece with a veil and white eyelashes, evoking the snow queen as well as purity.

Yet, as the show progressed, Youn proposed increasingly more daring mixes, such as dark corsets under light, nude silk tops, cashmere next to organza, and later juxtaposed to leather.

Giant bows and loose cuts symbolizing innocence were contrasted with flashy sequins and bare legs.

Halfway through the show, he began to introduce his black-draped brides: Dark, gothic, mourning creatures with white veils–reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride–a romantic, tragic questioning of love and death (Tristan and Isolde would have approved, surely).

He also punctuated his collection with flowers, a symbol for youth and fertility, that appeared on silk screen or Russian folk influenced patterns; this natural touch was completed by large insect rings; the silhouette was sometimes toned down by a pair of tailored trousers, such as notable asymmetrical harem pants.

But the ambiguity of his feelings towards marriage were best illustrated at the very end of the show: after all the models had passed, the initially fresh flowers had all been trampled on, and one couldn’t help noticed the wrecked, stained sheet underneath–a voluntary move or a poetic accident, who knows?