Verbal and Yoon are the Korean-Japanese design duo and actual couple who make jewellery, make music and make people stare. After a backseat car interview with the pair on the way to the Louis Vuitton show at Paris men’s fashion week, on exiting the vehicle, every camera man in sight saw red, vying for a piece of the rainbow bright, beautiful people.
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Verbal and Yoon started their [secondary] jewellery line ‘AMBUSH’ in 2008, going with the tagline “You will ask of AMBUSH jewellery what most people ask of psychedelic drugs”. Yoon told i-D online she was inspired by the 1973 film The Holy Mountain, and its psychedelic visuals for AMBUSH’s latest collection, named in homage, Holy Mountain. It features claws, crosses and eyes, all inspired by scenes from the film, and articulated in rainbow metallics that all connect and crossover in clever, intricate ways. They’ve used models for the campaign images, but we’ve no idea why when Yoon looks like how she does. With purple hair (for now at least), red lips and wearing practically every accessory form the Holy Mountain collection, Yoon is a walking poster girl, and Verbal too, but minus the hair and makeup and plus some shades and baggy hip-hop swag. On a break from his tour with Japanese hip-hop group M-Flo, for which his beloved and too-hot-to-be-a-Mrs wife Yoon styles him, Verbal and Yoon were in town to show their collection in the Bastille showroom and hang out with their mates, Terence Koh, Kim Jones, Sara from colette and Tim Blanks.
i-D online tried to steady a camera whilst dodging Parisian traffic, and spoke to the husband and wife style superstars about the new collection, the highs and lows of Japanese fashion, current politics in their native country and the inspiring way the country dealt with the 2011 earthquake. Original, unmistakeable and really nice, watch the pair i-N Conversation here, and browse Verbal and Yoon’s iPhone photo diary from gay Paris. One day, these two will run the world.
Text: Sarah Raphael
Photography: Verbal and Yoon
