A Day Out With KAPPY

Earlier this year, we visited Seoul, South Korea, a city that has long intrigued and inspired us, both through the brands we carry at Pick Store and from afar. It’s a sprawling, energetic city with a distinctive community of spaces across both retail and hospitality.

What stands out most is how naturally everything sits together. Independent coffee shops appear on almost every block, each with its own clear identity, while thoughtfully curated retail spaces seamlessly sit alongside them. A plethora and community of cafés, stores, and neighbourhoods come together in perfect harmony.

During our trip to Seoul, our first point of call had to be KAPPY. Founded by Kanga in 2020 from humble beginnings, the brand has grown steadily ever since. She’s the driving force behind the small team, and it’s been nothing short of inspiring to see how far she’s taken the brand.

We first met in Paris during Fashion Week in 2023 on one of our earliest buying trips. It was our first time navigating Welcome Edition, a huge multibrand tradeshow and showroom and like many first-timers, we were still finding our feet in the whirlwind of it all. Between the hustle and bustle that’s where we introduced ourselves. Both a little new to the pace and pressure of the tradeshow environment, we quickly found common ground in taking a more relaxed, thoughtful approach to things.

Naturally, we were drawn to Kappy’s easy, relaxed silhouettes and wide-cut styles, but what stood out most was the one-size-fits-all approach, a simple idea executed with real confidence.

A year later, we collaborated on our go-to staple, the Two Tuck Wide Pants. They quickly proved themselves in-store, fitting just about every body type with effortless ease. A refined everyday piece, done just right.

A quick bus ride took us to Mapo-gu, home to the Kappy flagship. As with any new city, there’s nothing better than being shown around by a local, and Kanga kindly gave us a tour of the neighbourhood before we caught up and rounded off the evening the best way, over classic Korean food and a few beers.

Enjoy!

Q & A

Great to see you, Kanga, and thanks for having us in your home city! Let’s get straight to it, how are you and what have you been up to recently?

Hey Dan and Liss,

Great to see you!

For the SS collection, we’ve been focusing the T-shirt lineup around seasonal graphics, so I’ve had a busy schedule with concept development and sketch meetings. We’re now in the final stages of preparing the 27SS samples, which will be presented at Pitti Uomo and Welcome Edition in June, so it looks like I’ll be busy throughout this month.

We love the Kappy flagship store. Can you tell us more about the store space?

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit the KAPPY store during your trip to Seoul. It truly means a lot to me, and I felt really happy and fulfilled being able to share and introduce this everyday space with you.

The KAPPY flagship store, which opened in Christmas 2023, is actually a typical Korean residential house where the landlord’s family still lives. It used to be a flower shop, hard to imagine now, but inside there were flower refrigerators and stacks of soil and fertilizer bags. The moment I saw the space, I immediately felt, “This is it!” There was something incredibly warm and cozy about it.

With the concept of a “WORKSHOP,” I wanted to create a space that functions as both an office and a showroom. The layout is centered around a large dashboard-style chalkboard as the main focal point. While the design and construction were handled by professionals, I was deeply involved in everything leading up to it, from the ideas and material selection to painting and washing. Anything that required time and physical effort, I took on myself, which makes this space especially meaningful to me.

The store is located in Seongsan-dong, Mapo-gu. Rather than being a commercial district, it’s a residential neighborhood where you can find hidden gems like vintage cafés and clothing shops tucked away in corners, places that only those in the know tend to visit. Recently, more well-known spots have started opening one by one, and it has become a popular area where young people come for dates. (I guess we were lucky!)

One thing that impresses us is how well Kappy suits a range of body shapes and sizes, while maintaining a one-size-fits-all cut. How did that come about and how have you executed it so well?

Even before KAPPY, “genderless” was already a trend of the times. But I wanted to interpret the idea of unisex in a much broader and more meaningful way.

When I was in my teens and twenties, shopping was clearly divided into men’s and women’s sections. The pieces in the men’s section had overly broad shoulders and were far too long, and many designs were based on military styles, which felt too rugged at the time. On the other hand, the women’s section was filled with what you might call very traditionally feminine items, lace, skirts, and so on.

Based on those personal experiences, I wanted KAPPY to create truly “genderless” and “sizeless” pieces. It wasn’t about driving some kind of radical innovation, but rather something that naturally came from my own experiences.

When it comes to the One Size collection, the key focus is, of course, sizing. The first and most important question was: which size should we base everything on?

Most Korean brands typically work with four different sizes. Since we were developing a one-size approach, I thought that building around a size 3–4 would allow us to maintain a slightly wide, relaxed fit while still accommodating a wide range of body types.

The first products we created were the Two Tuck Wide Pants and the Pigment T-shirt. We went through a lot of sampling and fit testing across a wide range of Korean body types, and through that process we were able to arrive at the most “KAPPY” version of sizing and fit.

I also think we were lucky with timing. The fact that we launched at a moment when wide-fit silhouettes were becoming widely accepted really worked in our favor. In many ways, it was a fortunate coincidence that the rise of this aesthetic aligned with the emergence of the KAPPY brand.

What’s your design process?

My colleague J is an obsessive vintage collector. I believe that only by seeing and wearing a lot can inspiration emerge, and our style become more solid and refined.

To summarise our process in a compressed way: we try on and test many collections in styles we like. Then, little by little, we layer in KAPPY’s own elements into each piece.

I don’t believe that a completely original design exists from the very beginning. We all have one neck, two arms, and two legs, the basic patterns for garments like T-shirts and trousers are fundamentally the same: two armholes and two leg openings. From there, what you add, what you remove, and how you combine elements is what defines a brand’s concept and identity.

In terms of colour and seasonal slogans, we often draw inspiration from animation films and music lyrics. Since everyday life can be seen in different ways depending on perspective, I think living with that kind of constant awareness, always keeping your senses open, is what allows you to find inspiration in daily life and translate it into collections.

What does Seoul mean to Kappy? Is there any aspect of the city that you’ve integrated into your design and overall brand?

I’ve lived in Seoul for 40 years since I was born, so I’ve never really stopped to think about what the city means to me.

But when I reflect on it slowly, I realise that Seoul is a place where nature and the city coexist. If you travel just a little bit north, south, east, or west, you immediately find mountains, and in the centre there is the Han River. It feels like a highly developed city, yet also like a kind of future city surrounded by nature.

I really like Seoul. Another thing I appreciate is that, while running KAPPY, I can source almost all the fabrics and materials I need within the city itself. That is also one of the great charms of Seoul.