PARIS — Whether it is material science, industrial design, anatomy or computer science, the founders of four brands based in Asia could have gone down different tracks. But in the end, fashion won out and as the fall 2026 runway shows get underway in Paris, WWD has its eye on them.
Bonbom
With an anatomy professor father, Bon-Bom Jo grew up leafing through medical books rather than magazines. “I had a lot of books about the human body and how the bone and muscles are made and how it can be exaggerated person by person,” he told WWD.
It could have led him into the medical field or down an artistic path, but fashion was his calling. After completing South Korea’s two-year mandatory military service, the graduate of Seoul-based Hanyang University’s fashion department moved to London in 2016 to study menswear at London College of Fashion.
His bachelor’s degree in hand and an eye toward a master’s program, he headed to Paris for an internship at Y/Project, an eye-opening experience that “really helped me learn that even casualwear could be very creative and interesting,” Jo said.
But as the designer was working on his application to the Institut Français de la Mode, the pandemic hit. Jo changed course. Instead of a master’s portfolio, his eponymous brand’s first collection was unveiled in 2020 — and retailers responded.
The finale of Bonbom’s spring 2026 show
Courtesy of Bonbom
Jo’s aesthetic mines the tension between tailoring-driven structure, a sense of the casual and his eye for the experimental. Clever pattern-cutting also invites wearers to “DIY themselves” into his designs that draw on 1990s subcultures, cinema and the human form itself, he said.
Bonbom designs have been seen on the likes of Doja Cat and a raft of hitmaker K-pop names such as Blackpink, Enhypen and Stray Kids. Jo also has an ongoing collaboration with Japanese label Maison Mihara Yasuhiro, now on its third iteration.
With China currently the brand’s biggest market, Jo is taking part in Concept Korea’s Paris Fashion Week showcase with an eye toward growing his international footprint.
The fall collection, shown as part of the Concept Korea showcase on Tuesday, examines the tension between military discipline and heightened femininity, rooted in his compulsory service. “I think it was like a love and hate kind of thing [with uniforms],” he said. “For me, all the fabrics, all the details, were also being the element to stimulate myself.”
Démoo
As Korean fashion continues to gain traction on the global stage, Choon-Moo Park is bringing her nearly 40-year-old brand Démoo to Paris Fashion Week for the first time.
Park has long been regarded as a pioneer of Korean avant-garde fashion — and she is often described as the “Ann Demeulemeester of Korea.”
Park does not describe her work simply as clothing, but as “an attitude, a way of being.” The garments are restrained, often monochrome, but anchored in deliberate structure. “Rather than pieces that seek attention,” she said, “I am interested in garments that leave a trace.”
The brand’s name reflects that philosophy and simple palette. A combination of “de,” meaning from, and “moo,” meaning emptiness, Démoo speaks a design language that begins with absence. Black is at the heart of the brand. For Park, it is “the color that can contain the most” with no distractions.
Démoo spring 2026 looks
Courtesy of Démoo
Park refers to her work as “thinking garments” — pieces that carry perspective rather than follow trends. In an era of accelerated fashion cycles, she continues to rely on restraint.
“Design always starts from reduction rather than addition,” she said, noting that over time her work has grown “increasingly simple” to distill her pieces down to what is essential. The result is a collection that balances structure and fluidity with architectural silhouettes rooted in her long-standing interest in form and negative space.
Now managed by her son, Yoon-Mo Choi, the brand is entering a new phase of growth, though its decision to show in Paris is less about boosting sales than expanding her worldview.
“It is about a presence that does not need to speak loudly in order to be felt,” she said. “I wanted to see whether the language we have developed could exist in a different context.”
Founded in 1988, the brand has built a loyal domestic following, with distribution across major Korean department stores and a global reach through Farfetch.
Eenk
What Hyemee Lee wanted when she launched Eenk in 2013 was to create a brand that would feel like a story so good it lingers after you’ve put the book down.
“I grew up around my father’s printing house,” she told WWD. “The smell of paper and ink, the weight of typography, and the physical act of imprinting something onto a surface shaped my understanding of creation as a form of recording.”
Her brand’s name is a witty play on the double E in the English spelling of her name and ink.
After cutting her teeth at a smorgasbord of fashion labels, from Martine Sitbon to South Korean brands Time and System’s menswear lines, the South Korean designer decide to strike out on her own in pursuit of what she deems “unconventional elegance,” a taste for pushing staples outside of their comfort zones.
“This process is about finding balance between familiarity and tension,” she said. “I want to keep what feels recognizable while introducing just enough disruption to create energy.” Also key is multiwear, which gives room for personal interpretation, she added.
Under the moniker “The Letter Project,” Lee started offering collections billed with a letter and a word starting with it, a decision to “create continuity and narrative,” she said. At the time, her goal was to take it all the way to an A-to-Z archive exhibition.
Lee working in her studio.
Courtesy of Eenk
But it “stopped being a linear destination and became a flexible framework” as the brand grew, she said. “Reaching the end of the alphabet is no longer because of completion but about timing.”
The Eenk creative process is iterative, translating an idea early on into a sample and following a “never linear” approach that is filled with “disappointments, adjustments and revisions,” for Lee and team. “It is a cycle of expectation and reality, of refining and recalibrating.”
A similar thought process influenced her decision to come to Paris, a desire for alignment and verification” that a South Korean brand could speak in a “contemporary global language” that has now culminated in Eenk’s first on-schedule presentation on March 10.
In just over a decade, Eenk has grown to a team of 40 people with revenue between 10 billion and 15 billion Korean won (between $7 million and $10 million) annually, which Lee said reflected “structured and steady growth.” The brand counts five retail locations in South Korea, including a Seoul flagship. Four of them stores that opened in the past year.
It is also stocked at the likes of Nordstrom and Printemps, with prices averaging around $850. Tops start around $95 while dresses and outerwear can go over $1,700 for the most complex constructions. Shoes, handbags and other accessories complete the lineup.
Jiwya
“Plant-based” usually describes what’s on your plate, not the Paris runway — but Indian luxury label Jiwya is changing that. The brand will make its fashion show debut on Friday with a collection featuring zero-waste, 100 percent plant-based textiles crafted using centuries-old artisanal techniques.
Cofounded by textile scientists Adhiraj Shinde and Aishwarya Lahariya, who serves as design head, Jiwya marries luxury design with zero-waste production, using handloom fabrics and natural dyes sourced from agricultural byproducts such as pomegranate skins.
The collection is titled “Lata” — Sanskrit for climbing plant or vine — reflecting both the brand’s environmental ethos and reverence for traditional craft.
“Both of us, as scientists, while working on materials, realized that for somebody to be attached to a product there has to be a story. That’s where Indian art started coming in,” Lahariya said. “Once we started working very deeply with hand-weavers and spinners, I realized how time-consuming it is and how it is actually very luxurious for somebody literally weaving every single thread of your garment, but it is not getting its due.
Mashru fabric being worked at Jiwya.
Courtesy of Jiwya
“Within a year of launching, we realized that for Jiwya to make credible noise it has to be on red carpets and runways,” she added.
Each silhouette prioritizes comfort and adaptability, with flowing forms, beaded textures, subtle volumetric details and embroidery. Flexible sizing allows for diverse body shapes, which the founders want to be sure to show on the runway, through casting with production house Flying Solo.
Every piece is geo-tagged to its artisan region, akin to French wine appellations, guaranteeing provenance and supporting distinct regional crafts. “It’s almost like the Champagne region of France, and you can only get the authentic thing from there,” Shinde said.
Lahariya previously cofounded the plant-based fur startup BioFluff, but shifted focus to Jiwya to address a gap in luxury fashion: high-end, fully sustainable pieces.
“Legacy European brands were ready to sign [memoranda of understanding] with us, but designers weren’t asking where the materials came from. That’s a gap I wanted to address,” she said.