'Dead Poets Society’ Inspires JUNTAE KIM's FW23 Collection

After sharing its SS23 “Garden Punk: Freedom Is Reality” collection, designer Juntae Kim’s eponymous label, JUNTAE KIM, has returned to unveil its Fall/Winter 2023 range. Titled “Romantic Poetry: The New Preppy,” the seasonal collection continues to explore gender-fluid wares through an ethos of “unraveling binary constructions.”

The latest reinterpretation of incompatibility between the established silhouettes of women’s costumes and both form and details of contemporary men’s clothing is inspired by the 1989 American drama film Dead Poets Society.

The FW23 collection begins by imagining movie characters and poet groups wearing the preppy, ivy league wares styled with JUNTAE KIM’s emblematic corset jackets, pourpoints, and doublets jackets. The collision between reciting their poems toward freedom in class under the pressure of an all-boys preparatory school known for its ancient traditions and high standards in subversive outfitting.

The collection itself reinterprets typical preppy looks of the 1950s with classic dressing and layering three-piece suits rendered in vivid colors and fabrication. The washed outfitting is further accented by cuts and slashes, along with corseting that disrupts beauty standards defined by gender, class, and body size for a new genre of fluid fashion.

Check out JUNTAE KIM’s FW23 “Romantic Poetry: The New Preppy” collection above.

Romantic Poetry

Freedom is that point on the horizon that we want to catch at all costs.
This tear with conformity, This swimming against the current.
She trains free, unique spirits, and this exudes a sulphurous passion from her.
It is the romance of our words (ills), individualizes and expresses our identity.
It makes us unique for our choices and our non-choices.
To be free is to be in control of your life.

It’s shouting its value from the rooftops of the world.
It is to seek, to find, and above all not to give in.
It is stabilizing this hand, afraid of asserting itself, afraid of grasping its dreams and ideas.
For fear of difference.
For fear of being different.

It can be formed from a tear, a cry, a word or a verse.
But it is above all a passion that drives us and makes us more human.
Not fighting to achieve it is a tragedy.
To not educate yourself on it too.

So you have to learn the rules, master them and break them.
Create this break with everything we know to build our own foundations.
And this hand, which has become solid, can now remove this black veil which covers the unknown.

Let’s shine our inner light and embrace this world of possibilities, its fears, its anxieties, its joys, its dreams and its desires.

For more contemporary fashion, transforming designs define Guerrilla-Group’s OSVI Season 06 “REKONSTRUKT II” collection.