4. ORIGIN / Why It Began and Where It Came From
Fashion was my way of survival
What do clothes or fashion mean to you?
I was born in Seoul, South Korea.
I grew up in a way that may have fallen a little short of average.
I was so timid as a child that my parents once sent me to a public speaking academy. (I am not even sure those still exist now. 🫥)
From a young age I was not exceptional at studying or sports. I was not especially good-looking and I did not have a natural sense of humor either.
I was never the leader of a group of friends. I can barely remember anyone admiring me or wanting to be like me.
Being class president or vice president was never even close to reality.
I did not even know what I liked or what I was good at.
Other kids seemed to have something. Math. Football. Music. Drawing. They all had at least one thing they could point to and say, this is mine.
I had nothing like that.
Then one day at a very young age I felt a quiet sense of danger.
If this goes on I thought I will grow up to become someone with nothing to offer.
I had no natural advantage over anyone else.
So I felt I had to create one for myself.
Did you know that in nature it is often the males that are more visually extravagant than the females?
That gave me a clue.
If I could not stand out in other ways, then I would make sure I stood out in the way I appeared.
That became my means of survival.
Like a peacock I felt I needed wings.
Something visible. Something sharp. Something that could keep me alive in a world where I had nothing else that felt exceptional.
Obsession and trial and error
That is why I became unusually strict about clothes from a very young age.
Looking back I was probably the only middle school student around me who was obsessing over sleeve length, hem length, thigh width, and overall silhouette like that.
There were no smartphones then. The internet was nowhere near what it is now. Information was limited. Even so, I was already paying that kind of attention.
I never wore just anything.
I saved money little by little and shopped everywhere I could, both online and offline. When I did not have enough money, I bought vintage secondhand clothes or sold what I already owned so I could buy something else. I kept searching for what actually suited me.
Even before Dongmyo became widely known, long before World famous K-Pop star G-Dragon’s visit on Infinite Challenge(Famous Korea TY show) made it famous I was already going there to look for clothes.
I was also buying strange things at places like Doota and Migliore in Dongdaemun while older guys pressured me and took extra money off me. (Back in the day, Korea was a bit of a wild place, and there’s a bittersweet fact that friends interested in fashion in Korea are well aware of)
Every garment was approached as a form of search and experiment.
The turning point in my life
Then one day in my third year of middle school, a boy at school who was extremely good-looking and popular looked at my shoes and asked me
where I got them.
Why is he asking me that I remember thinking.
But once I explained where I bought them, what brand they were, and how sizing worked something changed in his expression. Then he kept asking me about the rest of what I was wearing.
That was the beginning of something people often call confidence.
By high school that confidence had only grown stronger. Friends around me began asking for fashion advice as a matter of course. The clothes I wore drew questions and attention.
By the end of high school, that confidence had started to affect everything else. My relationships felt steadier. My place among other people felt more secure. Even my focus on studying improved because so much else in life no longer felt unstable.
It may sound like a small thing. But if you know anything about being a teenager you know how powerful peer groups can be.
Teenagers may ignore what their parents say, but someone one year older can feel like a celebrity, a president, and an emperor all at once.
That is how much recognition from your peers can matter at that age.(Literally)
And building that first small experience of success became the start of everything.
After that — seventeen years of obsession, now with expertise
Later I studied textile engineering at a university in Seoul and added engineering logic to what had once been only a hobby.
After taking part in a national fashion club, I eventually wrote my graduation thesis on wool fiber materials. What had started as a hobby also grew into paid fashion consulting on the side.
After graduation I passed through a hiring process with odds close to one hundred to one and joined the Korean business division of a fashion affiliate under one of the top five business groups in South Korea.
There I continued building my own philosophy around what makes a good garment.
In the end I came to see fashion from three angles at once. Sensory. Technical. Commercial.
Fashion can become a lever in life
Through that process one thing became even clearer.
Clothing is not just something worn on the body. It can become a force that moves a life.
The way people treated me changed when the way I dressed changed. More importantly, the way I saw myself changed.
A well-put-together appearance gave me far more confidence than I had expected. That confidence changed my attitude, my behavior, my goals, and eventually what I was able to achieve.
That is why I learned very early and very directly that clothing can alter the way a person thinks, behaves, and carries themselves.
It is not just decoration. It can become a lever that shifts a life.
For a long time I thought this was simply my own experience.
But then I found other people saying the same thing.
None of them run fashion brands. None of them work in fashion. None of them And yet they all say the same thing:
Change your clothes and your life changes with them.
t is not just me. Many people who have lived through that shift say the same thing again and again.
The child who was short, bad at studying, timid, and always saying I cannot and I should not is standing here now.
That child started from nothing and still ended up studying engineering in Seoul, living alone on the other side of the world with no local ties, joining an important role at a global fashion company, becoming an executive at a small startup, and meeting readers who believed in my story enough to help an independent publishing project grow to roughly USD 66,000 in cumulative funding even when publishers themselves said it would not work.
And there is much more still ahead.
Because I know the force clothing can carry, and because I have experienced that force for myself, I know that every meaningful change in my life began with clothes that helped bring me into my best state.
I wanted to make clothes that help the wearer feel themselves more clearly and live in a better state.
I wanted to make clothes that could become the beginning of change for someone who still has not found their own weapon, just as I once had not.
That is why ARCHENIS began.
ARCHENIS designs clothes for those standing at the beginning of a deeply desired change.
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