Thursday, September 27, 2018

A Former Cardi B Video Vixen Has Created the Most Instagrammable Loungewear Brand of the Year

What would loungewear look like if it was based on the wardrobe of flashy mobster girlfriends like Adriana La Cerva of The Sopranos—or perhaps her more elegant incarnation, Elvira Hancock from Scarface, or a loaded Beverly Hills housewife circa 1987? Hannah Park set out to answer this question when she created Oori Ott, a label based on all things “tastefully gaudy,” as she puts it. The designer and onetime video vixen—she appeared in the Petra Collins–directed Cardi B music video “Bartier Cardi”—created the label around what she herself wanted to wear but was not able to find. Her knit clothes have new-money touches like superhigh slits, body-encasing workout fits, and Lolita-ish ruffles: Think a striking bodysuit, dainty biker shorts with a frill trim, off-the-shoulder tops, and cheeky tank tops.


Park tapped photographer Mayan Toledano to shoot Oori Ott’s dreamy debut lookbook, which includes two Instagram favorites, model Leila Rahimi and actress Medalion Rahimi (not sisters!), posing in what Park describes as an “’80s postmodern dream house in Chino Hills with a sky-blue carpet, pink tiles, a tropical garden, a garage filled with vintage game machines, mannequins, a Chippendale’s stripper cutout, and so much more.” The loungewear fits the deliciously excessive mood, as in a set of plush drawstring pants with slits up to the hips and a turtleneck-meets-tunic with an inverted cutout that dips to the breastbone. The standout pieces come in a very double-tappable Princess Jasmine shade of blue.

Park began thinking about launching her label when she was living in New York and working in the commercial sphere of fashion. “I felt a little bit trapped and I wanted to start working on my own thing,” she says. “I was keeping my ideas in a box.” Eventually, Park moved back to her hometown of Los Angeles to help her mother launch a manufacturing company. During this time, she observed the downside of mass production. “I saw a lot of people struggling. All of the production was moving to China, and I also saw a lot of waste because people were overbuying,” she says. “Manufactures were selling their clothes for less than a cup of coffee. So, I started rethinking where and how I am going to make my clothes.” Now, Park, who is launching her label this week, sources from local manufacturers and is rolling out the collection in limited drops.

Park infused a bit of her Korean roots into the line as well. The name Oori Ott means “our clothes” in Korean, and touches on her relationship with quality. “I liked the idea of clothes being ‘ours,’ not ‘my’ clothes,” she says. “We usually don’t think about it, but it takes a lot of people and time to create the clothes we buy. If the quality is good, the clothes should last long enough for more than one person to wear.” This philosophy comes through in another heartwarming touch that brings the the brand full circle: Park styled the looks with her mother’s vintage oversize gold cross necklace for just the right amount of flashiness.

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