'Playing by the platforms': In Korea, winning fashion means winning the internet

Independent fashion brands in Korea, like Matin Kim and Mardi Mercredi, thrive due to supportive e-commerce platforms, fostering a new casualwear market that challenges traditional legacy brands.

Online screen captures from 29cm, a domestic fashion e-commerce platform [STYLESHARE]

Pastel-colored tank-tops, mesh bustiers with dainty flower prints, puffy halter neck blouses — these effortlessly innocent styles are the staples of Foeto, a 10-month-old designer brand in Korea that took off through 29CM. The designer label racked up over 300 million won ($218,000) in sales during its flash launch event in September. Within just seven months on the platform, its cumulative sales surpassed 2 billion won.

There are dozens more like Foeto. Mango Many Please. Bitter Cells. Till I Die. These aren’t K-pop songs, but names of some of the most-searched fashion brands in Korea today. Their indie predecessors Matin Kim and Mardi Mercredi are now household names, both of whom recorded over 100 billion won in annual sales last year.

A screen grab of domestic designer label Foeto's website [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Since their success, no longer do legacy brands and conglomerates reign supreme in Korea's young casual segment, which features everyday clothing for teens to those in their 30s. The spotlight, instead, is now on independent labels — many of which were launched by just one or two designers within the past five years — setting their sights not only on domestic success but also on global recognition.

As the overall fashion industry struggles to grow, its thriving indie scene is primarily powered by e-commerce platforms like Musinsa, Ably, ZigZag, 29CM and W Concept, which collectively draw more than 16 million users each month, according to Mobile Index Insight's data collected in April of last year. Unlike some of their Western counterparts, these Korean platforms are aggressively liberal: Instead of pushing established names, they carry an ever-changing catalog of obscure independent brands, which they now even nurture from the ground up.

Local fashion retailer 29CM's best seller category, listing contemporary designer label based in Korea [SCREEN CAPTURE]

This symbiosis between vertical fashion platforms and a new generation of homegrown designer labels is at the heart of the burgeoning K-fashion sphere.

“The rise of fashion platforms and their close ties with independent labels have reshaped the entire ecosystem, from manufacturing to consumer culture,” said Kan Ho-sup, fashion director and founder of streetwear brand Kommun The Wear. “Fashion has always looked ahead, but these platforms have accelerated that rhythm,” Kan believes — producing trend cycles far more immediate and seemingly exciting in Korea.

From crisis to cool: Korea’s young casual fashion

Matin Kim's offline store in Shibuya, Japan [MUSINSA]

Matin Kim was founded in 2015 as a one-woman blog-based shop. The brand logged 1 billion in sales in 2017 and a whopping 128.8 billion in 2024 — when operating profit hit 28.2 billion won, a 10 percent increase from the previous year. The brand is now establishing physical stores across Asia and expects to hit 180 billion won in revenue in 2025.

Sales at Mardi Mercredi, founded in 2018 by a designer-entrepreneur couple, jumped from 9 billion won in 2020 to 113.8 billion won in 2024. The brand now operates overseas stores in Asia, including Japan, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Macau, and plans to expand to the United States as well.

When the two brands were founded, their market was faltering. Legacy brands, like LEE Korea, Shinsegae International's Studio Tomboy and Hyundai Handsome's System of the 1990s, were in the process of being edged out by fast-fashion, or so-called “SPA” brands, and young casual fashion was widely deemed “in crisis” by news outlets.

In 2015, Shinsegae Department Store’s young casualwear segment recorded a sales growth rate of just 4.4 percent, following growth of 0.2 percent in 2013 and a fall of 2 percent in 2014. The same genre at the Hyundai Department Store experienced similar stagnation, with 3.3 percent growth in 2013, 2.7 percent growth in 2014 and a 1.3 percent decline in 2015.

Online brand MangoManyPlease's store that newly opened at the Hyundai Department Store's Pangyo branch [LEE JIAN]

That's been changing over the past five years: A wave of niche cult favorites has helped put a K in fashion alongside K-pop, K-drama and K-beauty.

Walk into a department store today, and you’ll find that many once-popular brands like Sisley, Egoist and Claudie Pierlot have been ousted and replaced by independent online names like Mango Many Please, Matin Kim, Avie Muah and City Breeze.

Online brand Avie muah's store that newly opened at the Hyundai Department Store's Pangyo branch [LEE JIAN]

New domestic clothing and footwear trademark registrations numbered 9,593 last year, more than double the 4,167 recorded in 2014, according to the Korea Fashion Industry Association.

Some big names — such as Kolon Industries' young casualwear label, Lucky Chouette, and shoe label, Suecomma Bonnie — are adapting to the new landscape. Kolon launched new collections, Chouetties, under Lucky Chouette and 212 Fev SCB under Suecomma Bonnie earlier this year, both of which offer price points slightly lower than the brand's typical items and market themselves through social media and online fashion platforms.

“The rise of new indie fashion labels is a threat to us, but it can also be a chance for us to look back and grow further with the modern times,” said a Kolon Industries spokesperson.

But independent brands argue that being untethered from corporate bureaucracy gives them a sharper edge in today’s rapidly moving fashion scene,

“While the structured systems of large corporations can be beneficial, they can also become overly complex,” said a spokesperson for casualwear brand Dunst, part of this emerging cohort. “When quick decisions and agile action are needed, having too many decision-makers can slow down the process.”

Dunst's 2025 resort collection, ″Fortuna″ [DUNST]

Launched in 2019 as an in-house venture by Korean fashion giant LF, Dunst separated from LF and became its subsidiary in 2021. It has since experienced rapid growth, particularly online. With a flat organizational structure, its teams handle design, planning, production, sales, and marketing autonomously — allowing the brand to respond flexibly while preserving its unique sensibility.

“Being online allows the brands to respond sensitively to feedback while also maintaining their distinct identity,” the spokesperson said. “But the biggest common thread among them is that they go beyond simply being ‘makers of clothes’ — they approach their work like creators, proposing culture and curating content.”

A digital power couple: Fashion retail apps and indie brands

Matin Kim began selling through Musinsa in 2020. There, it moved five times the volume that on its own website, the JoongAng Ilbo reported last year.

The average monthly transaction volume for 29CM-listed brands launched within the past five years has doubled from last year, 29CM reported in January. During the same period, the number of brands surpassing 100 million won in monthly transactions increased by more than 60 percent.

“Online fashion retailers have become the medium through which niche labels connect with buyers — introducing a sort of fan culture to fashion,” said Kan.

Globally, that trend echoes the rise of Amazon Fashion in the United States and Zalando in Europe.

Promotional event page for domestic designer labels on fashion e-commerce platform ZigZag [SCREEN CAPTURE]

It’s a mutually beneficial relationship: Platforms themselves have also grown significantly thanks to these labels.

Domestic small- and medium-sized enterprises made up 78 of the top 100 brands, by sales, that did business on Musinsa Store in 2023. Their total transaction volume increased by 93.5 percent compared to 2020, while that of foreign brands grew by only 36.3 percent and that of large conglomerates by 39.8 percent, the platform said in a press release in 2023.

Musinsa surpassed 1.2 trillion won in annual sales last year, marking a 25 percent increase from 2023, and 100 billion won in operating profit. Ably's revenue rose 28.8 percent to 334.4 billion won in the same period. Kakao Style, the operator of ZigZag, made 200.4 billion won in 2024.

These gains are notable given the broader industry slowdown. The Samsung Fashion Institute projected that the Korean fashion market would grow by just 1 percent in 2025 in its year-end report last year.

Recognizing this symbiosis, platforms are now actively nurturing young designers.

29CM is hosting weekly sales events, aiming to boost awareness and growth among new brands. Musinsa launched an incubation program, with 72 percent of participants being emerging labels founded within the past three years.

“By leveraging Musinsa’s expertise and infrastructure, we were able to provide tailored support during the critical early growth stages, which catalyzed the development of emerging brands,” a Musinsa representative said. “We will continue to focus on discovering and nurturing new brands so that Musinsa can lead a virtuous cycle within the domestic fashion ecosystem.”

“We’re heavily investing in marketing support for growing emerging brands to vitalize the women’s fashion brand ecosystem further,” said a 29CM spokesperson. “We will continue to expand support so that high-potential labels can keep growing on 29CM.”

But there’s a downside. As much as platforms have empowered small, independent labels, they’ve also become gatekeepers of success. Marketing power has now shifted heavily to platforms, Kan pointed out, and the dynamics can be unforgiving.

“Emerging brands increasingly rely on internal platform policies to be featured in main banners or curated promotions,” he said. “Which brand gets placed on the main page often determines both sales and survival.”

While platforms offer reach and infrastructure, they also concentrate control over visibility, making discovery less democratic than it may appear on the surface. In this ecosystem, survival increasingly hinges not only on creativity, but also on a brand’s ability to navigate platform politics.

“It’s not just about great design or storytelling anymore,” Kan added. “It’s about playing by the platform’s algorithm and understanding its curation logic.”

BY LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]