That our bodies are more than 60 percent water is a much-relayed upon metaphor.  We use it to explain our connection to the world around us. We use it to explain our changing moods. 

​

While silk striped voile, lightweight linen-denim, textured leather, and the remaining materials in Suk Chai’s "Water" collection do not contain this same liquid-to-solid proportion, there is something in us that senses they’re born of rivers, streams, lakes, and ocean shores.  And they are. 

​

Water, this collection, is rooted in memories of the quiet fishing trips she took with her father in Alaska in her teenage summers. The strong, oversized silhouettes reference minimalism; the colors are taken from nature’s wetlands; the details are all industry and utility; and the frail, fluid fabrics touch on deep intimacy and soft revelations. The shape, the weight, and the movement of lean big-pocket blazers, leather tunics, engineered duster jacket, and long, jam-like shorts connect with a certain 80s aesthetic which relates to the time frame that spawned the designer’s memories of sound and breeze and current and catch, but the reference is more accidental than explicit.  A more deliberate connection with traditional Korean agricultural garb and workwear is twice as nuanced, and twice as meaningful.

​

“My father is the archetype of strong and silent. I was the youngest child; I couldn’t even swim,” Chai recalls.  “We were alone with nature and the need to put in a good day’s work. It was cold, and it could be dangerous. We didn’t talk, we just were.”

​

The designer’s offering for the collection is a way of being, too—a way, perhaps, of finally having a conversation about light, breeze, beauty of vulnerability and togetherness.