Protocol Index: the Seoul studio rebuilding the basics

Korean fashion has grown fast enough over the last decade that a lot of it now looks the same — fast to market, sharp on trend, thin on argument. Protocol Index is the counter-case, and it is one of the reasons we picked it up.

A studio, not a brand

Protocol Index is a Seoul design studio founded by Augustine Oh and Jude Lee, who previously worked under the name Project G/R. It works across fashion, spatial design and visual direction, and the order of those matters: clothing is one output of a design practice rather than the whole business.

Project G/R began as an experiment rather than a commercial venture — a platform for testing form and structure without a market attached. That inheritance is visible in everything the studio now makes. The stated ambition is a house with long-term cultural relevance rather than seasonal reach, with Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto named as the reference points. That is a serious thing for a young studio to say out loud.

Construction as the concept

The method is deconstruction, expansion and reduction, applied to garments everybody already owns. A hoodie. A track jacket. A thermal. A pair of sweatpants.

These get dissected and rebuilt: panels distorted, seams placed where no seam belongs, proportions expanded until the shape stops referencing the original. The signature piece is the multi-layered trouser — a garment that reads as two or three layered pants at once and is in fact a single engineered construction.

The reason this works, and the reason a lot of conceptual clothing does not, is that the finishing is good. Visible paneling only reads as design if the panels are cut cleanly. Sloppy deconstruction just looks like damage.

Why the basics

There is a strategic intelligence in choosing hoodies and sweatpants as the material. Nobody needs to be taught what a hoodie is, which means the entire attention of the viewer goes to what has been done to it. Start with a ballgown and the deconstruction disappears into the general strangeness.

It also means the pieces are wearable in a way experimental clothing frequently is not. The silhouette is unfamiliar; the garment is not. You can put on a Protocol Index track jacket and go to work.

Buying it

Proportions are expanded by design. Take your normal size — the volume is engineered in, and sizing up produces slack rather than shape.

Layered trousers and multi-panel pieces are heavier than they look. That weight is what makes them hang correctly.

Wash cold and hang dry. Panel construction and applied hardware do not enjoy a tumble dryer.

Entry points: the caps and t-shirts carry the graphic language cheaply. The track jackets are where the construction argument is clearest. The layered trousers are the piece to buy if you are buying one thing.

At ANSH46

Protocol Index is one of the larger collections in the store, and it sits deliberately close to the maisons rather than in a separate youth corner. It earns that position.

This is also exactly the kind of label our floor exists for. A photograph of an engineered trouser tells you almost nothing. Put it on and the argument makes itself in about four seconds.

Browse Protocol Index at ANSH46, or see menswear and accessories.