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Moon Choi, 27, is a Seoul-born, New York–based designer with a mind of her own. Through a dreamy lineup of boxy suit coats and sheer piped tunics, the recent Parsons graduate intends to affect change. “I always look at gender boundaries and want to break them,” she says. “There are no rules to making clothing or to wearing them.” It is a powerful movement in the States, but still nascent in Korea, where Choi is from. But more surprising than her personal revelations regarding gender is the lack of heavy-handed messaging to accompany it—Choi’s clothes are simply lovely and plainly presented to people without labels.

In a sunlit showroom space in Soho, not far from where she currently works, she pages through her Spring 2018 sophomore offering (her first, Fall 2017, was her graduation collection). Scenes inspire her: Here, she imagined a single figure, waking up in bed at dawn. “Woman, man, it doesn’t matter, but looking at that person’s shape, their back,” she says, “the linen blanket, the sunbeams coming through the window, those soft textures.” The feeling comes through clearly in the poetic clothes, largely woven in silk, cotton, and other natural fibers.

There are shrug-sleeve coats and wrap skirts the color of turmeric, constructed largely from Japanese fabrics: a soft pink velvet, slightly wrinkled as though it was slept on. Then there’s a sheer dyed organza that she developed and plans to make her signature. “This see-through nature, it’s like the sun coming through the curtains,” she says, lifting the sleeve of a pale blue shirtdress with thick white dimensional stripes that nod to window blinds. “They create those lines and shadows.” Similarly, cargo pouch pockets are shaped like the window’s frame.

Moon Choi revolves around tailoring—the typically masculine realm of suits first caught her eye as a kid, watching her father, a businessman, dress for the office. “Every time he left the house, he would come out in a clean suit,” she says. “I started to look at how the clothes formed his identity and attitude.” Working within that limited framework, Choi tries to upend expectations and “blur the boundaries between masculine and feminine”: silk blazers with dramatically padded shoulders and suit coats worn backwards as a cool subversion.

This rule-breaking stance is particularly revolutionary for a native Korean, as the country maintains fairly rigid gender norms to this day (“In Korea, women have a specific kind of role,” she says with some frustration). Choi is still informed by her childhood in Seoul, particularlyby the inflexible school system. Girls wear stereotypically feminine, deliberately modest skirts and collared tops; there is little room for expression, and she hated that then. “But when I started studying fashion, I became fascinated by that slight tension in the clothes,” she says. “Uniforms and suits, mixing those elements and finding freedom within them gave me a sense of purpose. To find freedom inside daily life.”

Choi puts it simply: “When it comes to gender, these days, women’s and men’s doesn’t matter,” she says. “You might be a man, but want to wear a skirt. I just design it, and then put it out there to let the customers decide.” Now, with the launch of her e-commerce platform today and a full-scale presentation to follow next year, more people than ever will be free to do just that—in New York, Seoul, and all points in between.Read more at:white formal dresses | vintage formal dresses