PARIS — Two years after returning to the Paris men’s calendar, South Korean label Songzio is firing on all cylinders.
The next move for the brand, which turned 30 last year? Everything, everywhere, all at once, if Songzio Group creative director and chief executive officer Jay W. Song is to be believed. By that, he means an ambitious retail expansion plan with two flagships and the launch of womenswear in the first half of the year.
Oh, and the Friday runway reveal of its fall 2024 men’s collection, titled “Night Thieves,” in which Song explores a “less pretty and more anti-hero” direction.
“That’s really what I was preparing for the last five years,” he told WWD. “That time has really been about establishing our base in Seoul so we could expand overseas quickly.”
The opening of a flagship in the South Korean capital in April, followed by another in Paris in June, is the culmination of the process initiated in 2017, when Columbia graduate Song took over from his father, label founder and now-group chairman Zio Song.
“Until then, although we’ve been around for 20 years, [seeing Songzio as] an emerging brand was quite correct,” he said, characterizing the label as “more creative than commercial.”
The younger Song’s first order of business was pulling back to concentrate on its domestic South Korean market — and turning the brand into a group.
Not only did he nurture its avant-garde aesthetic, but he added the Songzio Homme contemporary line; folded the more formal offering called Zio by Songzio back into the company after nearly 20 years as a license, and eyed a more youthful — and unisex — client with Zzero by Songzio, which came with a panther mascot and a dash of kidswear.
The group’s latest launch is SSAW, a lineup of essentials for men and women. The Seoul flagship, in the Dosan Park area of Gangnam that is home to international luxury brands, will be the first to showcase the group’s full offering. It will also be home to the Black Eyes Gallery that will offer biweekly exhibitions of artistic talents.
To support this rapid growth, private investors, who have since exited the independent company again, provided capital. Retail expansion was effected at a rapid clip of 15 to 20 openings a year in South Korea.
“But we were missing a significant international presence,” said Song of the company, which now has revenues of about $80 million and generates over 95 percent of its business in South Korea, according to the executive.
Internationally, the main line is present with 15 doors, including Printemps in Paris, Harvey Nichols in London and H. Lorenzo in Los Angeles.
For both Songs, the French capital was the obvious choice for the first international flagship, as the elder Song studied at Esmod Paris and his son spent his childhood there as the family business grew.
A yearlong search yielded a three-level, 1,615-square-foot unit located at 10 Rue Charlot, an address befitting an “avant-garde, niche, artsy” brand like theirs, Song said.
Its Brutalist concrete-and-wood spaces were designed by Paris-based interior architecture studio Hypnos, which also conceived the brand’s Printemps corner as well as trendy upscale eateries Ojii and Cloche.
Plus, it felt perfect as something of a starter home, as the brand will soon after need a second spot to house the women’s line due to bow during the spring 2025 show in June.
Womenswear is a territory Song always wanted to explore, feeling that the commercial take on Songzio’s men’s runway aesthetic occasionally watered down its creative oomph.
He aims to target an “artistic, fashionable” female counterpart to the main Songzio line, tapping into its deconstructivist tailoring. “What we would do in women’s would be more freely exaggerated and I feel it would be closer to the show,” he hinted.
Song already has the next international opening in his sights: New York in 2025. As the brand’s U.S. business is currently “nonexistent” by his own admission, he feels a splash is in order. “I always felt that if we did something it had to be very visible, very recognizable, fast,” he said.
In Manhattan, he hinted that he was looking for an area that would echo the fashion-loving foot traffic of the Rue Charlot location, which he described in New York as “Green, Brewer and Broome [streets] and that’s about it.” Further afield, he’s looking at tailoring the offer to the local market by bringing in the contemporary lines.
For all that, Song still sees the family business as an emerging brand on the international stage. “Honestly, it feels very nice because it gives us greater freedom – for an event or a marketing strategy we’re trying to pull off,” he said.
