Future Shock: Fashion Forward Wear for the Sci-Fi Friendly

Whether we like it or not the future has arrived, and according to the fashion machinations of South Korean brand Cres. E Dim., we had best prepare ourselves for a future shock.

Cres. E Dim, a fashion house founded by acclaimed Korean designer Kim Hongbum, is an abbreviation for the instructional devices in music that tell the performer to gradually increase in loudness or softness. Upon looking at the clothes produced by Hongbum and his associates, this moniker seems entirely inappropriate, for their clothes are not gradually doing anything. Represented in striking color clashes and seamlessly juxtaposing patterns, Cres. E. Dim.’s lineup can be summed up in one word: bold.
    In a new collection fittingly titled “Future Shock,” Hongbum presents a vision of fashion that cleaves through the rest of the Alexander McQueen wannabes plaguing the runways of fashion weeks around the world. “Future Shock” hits you over the head like a blunt axe with its sheer, viscerally arresting apparel. There’s something for everybody in the rich spread Hongbum presents; leather tops straight out of a Lady Gaga music video, silky overcoats so long they can double as wizard’s robes, professional wear that would make Cruella deVille drool, and fur laden overcoats that will have gay men in SoHo weeping with envy.
    The highlights of the collection are the pieces where Hongbum incorporates a technological aesthetic in his carefully calculated garments. Note the intricately crafted clutch purses and sweatshirts that are laden with patterns that could only be described as ‘internal hard drive chic,’ or the various tops that are encircled with a Metropolis-esque city skyline, used for devastatingly thematic effect in the outfit where this bleak skyline is collated with a pattern of a cloudy, blue sky.
    “Future Shock” is a work of high fashion that lives up to its name. Hongbum presents each piece of clothing with an angular precision set to stun, while simultaneously giving us a taste for the couture of a post apocalyptic future. If living in a nuclear fallout zone or a world ruined by war with machines means I get to wear any of these pieces, then sign me up. 

Photography courtesy of Cres. E Dim.