How Minju Kim – Korean designer for K-pop bands BTS and Red Velvet – won Netflix’s Next in Fashion
Minju Kim’s runway show wowed the crowd in the grand finale of the reality show, bringing smiles to everyone’s faces, and making her family cry tears of joy
Minju Kim is the first winner of Netflix’s reality series, Next in Fashion (hosted by Tan France and Alexa Chung), which landed the South Korean fashion designer a US$250,000 investment prize and a chance to design for luxury retailer Net-a-Porter.
Kim’s journey to victory goes way beyond the 10 episodes that saw her overcome 17 other designers in the competition. Despite running her own brand since 2015, she says it has been “hard and tough”, and that her sister, who controls the business side of her label, is the “tough tiger” who “kills her creativity”.
The grand finale offered Kim an opportunity to do what she really wants. “I think this is the right time to show people what Minju Kim is really [all about],” she said.
Fashion dragons
Contestants started the show in teams. Minju Kim was paired with Chinese designer Angel Chen, and they christened themselves the “dragon princesses”.
They advanced to the semi-finals, nailing looks for the prints and patterns and streetwear categories, marrying their styles into breathtaking pieces, and later, winning challenges on their own.
Fragile confidence
One of Chung’s first questions asked all the designers was whether any of them had attended top fashion schools. Kim actually graduated from two: the Samsung Art Design Institute in 2008 and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2013.
