Designer Cherry Kim Pays Homage to Her Mother

New York-based designer Cherry Kim’s latest collection, for her brand Rhee, is an ode to her childhood New Zealand home, Laura Pitcher reports for fashion magazine, NYLON.

Kim, 24, describes that house as a mess. “My mum is a huge hoarder and there were always weird trinkets everywhere that we’d pick up at garage sales,” she tells NYLON. Growing up as a first-generation Korean born and raised in New Zealand, this clutter became the basis of her latest collection for Rhee, a label she launched in 2020 and christened after her mother’s maiden name.

The “Mothball Collection”, is her third but Kim says it’s the first one in which she drew inspiration from her own life.

In another tribute to her upbringing and experience as a Korean-New Zealander living in New York, Kim chose to donate 25 per cent of the new collection’s sales to Heart of Dinner, a not-for-profit organisation delivering meals to Asian elders in New York, in light of the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes.

Original article by Laura Pitcher, NYLON, April 9, 2021.