My secret to keeping a London fashion brand afloat as independent London businesses crumble all around me

To find the South Korean decorator Rejina Pyo, 41, grinning connected the 4th level of the Soho Revue assemblage is simply a singular thing. She is dressed successful her ain beige, pleated skirt, pinstriped achromatic shirt, burnt orangish sweater vest and cobalt bluish adidas Sambas, busily curating an accumulation which volition people her brand’s decennary anniversary. I situation you to find anyone moving successful the British manner industry who volition not archer you that is simply a momentous feat.

Why? Because keeping a manner marque afloat successful London contiguous is — to enactment it bluntly — an expensive, bloody and often damn-near intolerable task. Retail infrastructure is crumbling, aspirational shoppers creep ever person to going the mode of the dodo, and casualties are stacking up. Leading luxury retailer Matches Fashion, one-time high-street overlord Ted Baker, and outfitter of the richest and astir famous, The Vampire’s Wife — each person fallen into medication successful the past year. Remaining brands are crowding A&E. 

Despite this, Pyo is inactive standing. We are lone a stone’s propulsion from her ain store connected Upper St James Street, which opened successful 2022 and is presently packed afloat of her signature benignant of wearable garments which person attracted a fiercely loyal lawsuit base. “It’s been 10 years but it feels much similar 20,” she says. “I admit however unthinkable it is to beryllium a wholly autarkic concern astatine this status. To beryllium loved and lasting present — that successful itself is amazing.”

Indeed, galore would ne'er person guessed it. When she graduated from Saint Martins successful 2011, London Fashion Week was much blaring lights, bone-thin models and jelly Christopher Kane jackets than thing much demure. “It was maximalist,” says Pyo. “It felt precise overmuch similar determination was nary spot for what I emotion and bash — thing wearable for existent women was not what you strived for.” 

Some insiders brushed disconnected her subtlety and sophistication arsenic boring, unadventurous and plain. Well, the joke’s connected them. It became her superpower, arsenic truthful galore astir her continued sketching chaotic looks connected illustrated figures that sooner resembled metallic birches than immoderate paying customer. “It conscionable doesn’t marque consciousness for maine to bash that,” she says. “When I’m successful the designing process, I deliberation astir myself, my friends, and each the inspiring women astir me. [I also] see a batch of things.” For example? “Can you really devour meal successful this?”

Pyo has steadily physique a coterie of existent women — precocious flyers successful the arts, interior design, adjacent concern banking — who curse by her stark usage of colour, sculptural silhouette frocks and playful incorporation of lace, taffeta and chiffons (dresses commencement astatine £395; tops £145 and skirts £250; rejinapyo.com). 

“Real” stands opposed to slebs who get looks for a premiere, thing that makes Pyo, if not really past figuratively, oculus roll. “I’m not truly bothered astir dressing idiosyncratic connected the reddish carpet and objectifying this person,” she says. “I’m overmuch much funny successful idiosyncratic connected the thoroughfare truly working, walking around, wearing the pieces. So galore radical archer me, ‘Oh my God, this is 1 of my favourite pieces of covering that I’ve ever owned.’ That is what I strive for.”

She present lives successful “really far-out” northbound London, with her husband, cook and broadcaster Jordan Bourke, and their 2 young children. But if you had met Pyo, who was calved and raised successful Seoul, erstwhile she came to the UK successful 2008, you mightiness not person expected her to aquatics rebelliously upstream. 

“I came with precise small English, and studied nether Louise Wilson [the fabled, precocious Saint Martins tutor]. She was Scottish, and I didn’t recognize anything.” Just arsenic well; Wilson was known for her cutting tongue. One acquisition did instrumentality with Pyo, though: “Do what you bash and bash it good and determination volition beryllium radical who find you.” 

In the pursuing years, she “did it backwards; gathering my concern earlier I did the amusement oregon anything …  a dilatory contention wins”, she says. Her debut catwalk did not travel until 2017, erstwhile she took implicit London’s Quaker Centre connected Euston Road. It was followed by 8 more  shows, including 1 astatine the Olympic London Aquatics Centre. The past came successful September 2022. 

She had started to enactment connected plans for a store successful the pandemic, aft becoming disenchanted with the runway model. She past took “what I recognize was a large risk”, and went bricks and mortar. “It was rather daunting. It’s costly — but I deliberation it’s the champion happening I’ve ever done.” It took her concern exemplary towards nonstop to user and distant from the wholesale strategy which “is precise overmuch powerfulness to the retailers” and has transpired to beryllium a lifeline arsenic institutions specified arsenic Matches went down. It’s not to accidental everything is rosy. Companies House shows that the label’s nett plus presumption dropped sharply successful the twelvemonth to April 2024; however, “having the store truly allows maine to person control”.

She inactive makes 4 collections a year, but is looking to chopped that backmost imminently due to the fact that “there is truthful overmuch worldly retired there, I don’t deliberation we request four”, and crook her absorption to grow to a wider manner offering. And Pyo doesn’t unopen down the thought of moving to a large house, either, though does spot it “like a marriage. I americium being careful.” Instead, she favours one-off collaborations, astir precocious with Mulberry this September. She does marque enactment of the deficiency of women filling apical manner jobs, saying, witheringly: “It is wholly imbalanced.”

Currently, though, she is focused connected finishing her exhibition. Called As She Is, it features “female artists who genuinely animate me”. Alongside works from Galician-born sculptor Ángela de la Cruz and British creator Chantal Joffe, she is excited to contiguous Korean antiques collected by her mother. “There is simply a four-generation-old basket, but it’s similar a luncheon container that they carried nutrient in,” she says. “I grew up astir these things astatine home, but seeing them with a caller eye, I realised however unthinkable they are.”

As our speech comes to an end, she starts discussing a fashionable Korean property trial she has precocious taken. “A superior P idiosyncratic has nary plans, and a superior J idiosyncratic has everything each mapped out,” she says. “I americium superior P — I consciousness I’m much of a fluid person, I spell with the flow,” she says. I americium not truthful sure. I wonderment if she has had this each pencilled retired agelong ago.

“As She Is”, Curated by Rejina Pyo, October 23 to November 2, Soho Revue, sohorevue.com