Hi. I am Subin Hahn, a “Fluidwear” designer. Taken from traditionally feminine elements, my designs challenge traditional men’s and unisex fashion aesthetics, aiming to provide diverse choices and equal opportunities in contemporary fashion, while embracing his or her own ambiguity and fluidity.

Based on my belief, art is a spiritual activity that conveys one’s faith and belief. I aim to help the wearers bring out their own spirits through his designs and to give hope of a better future, by creating the illusion of a world that I wish to belong with.

Born in Suwon, South Korea, I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Parsons School of Design in New York. I started my career as an intern at Zac Posen and continued working at Marchesa, Calvin Klein, and Vaquera in New York. In 2018, I joined the shoe design team at Marc Jacobs and worked for runway and contemporary shoes.

I believe fashion shouldn’t have divisions. Men should be able to wear feminine elements as women are able to wear masculine elements as they wish while embracing his or her own ambiguity. I always wanted to make clothes specifically designed for boys or men who want to wear something different than traditional menswear. I chose to be a fashion designer so I can provide my unique vision for people who feel comfortable expressing their own personalities and aren't afraid of exploring fashion outside of the traditionally gendered categories.

My brand is called “Subin Hahn Fluidwear” and I am the founder and designer of the brand. Fluidwear focuses on diversity of styles and fluidity through non-binary clothing designed for all genders. Apart from traditional men's and womenswear, "fluidwear" encourages individuals to explore fashion in their own way, and to create beauty in fluidity.

My brand was founded in 2018 and launched its first collection during New York Fashion Week in September 2018. Since then, I have continued to develop seasonless capsule collections collaborating with independent artists and photographers to present the message of “fluidwear” in various artistic platforms, including performing arts, exhibitions and editorials. I have recently started developing commercial items mainly targeting the United States market while aiming to reach global audiences. Most of our clothing is produced as limited edition and is handmade in-house. We work with a few local artisans in Seoul, South Korea to develop handcrafted accessories including shoes and handbags.

Design is re-creating something that is driven by a strong purpose of its existence. What sets the design apart from fine art, although these two are often intertwined, is its clear purposefulness and functionality. I use the word “recreate” because it is extremely difficult to make something purely original, especially in contemporary design industry. What designers do is to rethink and twist what already exists by adding personal character and philosophy.

Besides fashion, I am very into interior and stage designs because they are inevitable elements for fashion design. Whether you are in need of a runway show venue or a brick and mortar store, or a performing art stage, creating a good environment or space enhances the designers' message visually. These well-designed environments help the audience to have a full-on experience of what the designers want to communicate through their work.

Designs that cause conversations between the audiences. I like designs that provoke the viewers to have multiple interpretations. I started my fashion line as "Gender Fluid Wear" but later switched to "Fluidwear" for this reason because it allows more room for imagination and diverse ways to interpret what fluidity means by individuals.

Feminine, fluid, ambivalent, delicate, and vibrant. My design inspiration mainly comes from traditional womenswear so it often shows delicate fabrication, vibrant colors, and print designs. All print designs are very personal to me since I use most of my early paintings and drawings as motifs. Ambiguity and fluidity are essences of my clothing as they are designed to be interpreted by individual wearers instead of following the traditional categorization in fashion design.

I usually start the process by creating fashion illustrations in a form of an abstract mixed-media collage using cut-out shapes from reference visuals. From this, I extract interesting contours, forms, and silhouettes to translate them into actual garments. In between the processes, I often make "3D sketch" models by draping abstract paper cut-outs on a half-scale dress form. This exercise helps me to find interesting volumes and sometimes I create experimental pieces directly from it. I love this preliminary design process because it feels very much like a play without limitation.

I am very happy and grateful that my work can get more attention from global audiences through this award. I thank all members who helped me create this beautiful body of work and this award is a validation of their hard work.

All of my collections are visualizations of an imagined world that I wish to be a part of. I started this project by researching my styles from childhood, mostly from the 1990s, and the contradiction between what I wore and what I wish to wear as a boy. I found a lot of resemblances in styles with a few Disney characters like Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and Alice who daydreams of another world in their own imaginations. With this, I designed styles by incorporating the elements of Disney princesses and prince outfits that I wished to wear growing up.

This collection is titled "Be Thou My Vision" taken inspiration from a traditional Christian hymn. It is a visual testament of an imagined environment of my own based on the idea of heaven or paradise promised as an inheritance of faith by the creator in a biblical context, which is part of the influence of my designs growing up in a Christian family. The editorial series was directed as if I was captured as a subject in beautifully painted impressionistic paintings wearing reimagined outfits based on my childhood daydream.

This project is very personal to me in the sense that I heavily used my own memories and explored the emotions regarding my early dress practices, but this conflicting idea of what's acceptable to wear and what I truly want to wear is a very universal experience and relatable to many people in contemporary society. In this sense, I thought this collection can be a good representation of people who have experienced the same way as I felt growing up and that is why I chose to enter this project into the 2021 Muse Design Awards hoping my story could reach more people globally

Diversity of thoughts, inclusion, and open-mindedness.

I believe fluid fashion will be more prominent in the mainstream fashion industry. These non-binary styles are actually being introduced among many young designers around the world and I am very happy to see this is getting more attention and continuing to grow as a serious part of the contemporary fashion industry.

Artists and designers who challenge the traditional way of thinking. Walt Disney, who created an hour-long animated feature (Snow White) when nobody thought they would watch a cartoon for that long period of time in a theater, Yves Saint Laurent, who designed "Le Smoking Suit" when women wearing a suit was controversial in society, and the Impressionism artists who went against the tradition and developed their own painting styles despite the negative audiences and critics are huge inspirations to me.