Paris Fashion Week: Monochrome as Manifesto, Démoo Debuts New AW26/27 Menswear Collection

Backstage at Démoo in Paris, soulful expressions enhanced the poetic, monochromatic mood of the new collection. Photograph (above) and cover picture by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM 

At Paris Fashion Week, Démoo’s Autumn-Winter 2026/2027 presentation marked a new chapter for the Seoul design house, as Park Choon Moo advanced her pared-back aesthetic into a dialogue between womenswear and menswear. The collection distilled the brand’s four-decade commitment to architectural tailoring, tonal discipline and the expressive power of black. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Andrea Heinsohn

In Paris, cellist Lisa Strauss created 

atmospheric music for the runway show.

ON a grey Paris Tuesday morning in the Marais, Parisian press, international editors and buyers threaded their way down Rue de Turenne toward Galerie Ellia, where Démoo presented its Autumn/Winter 2026 collection. 

Outside, the walls of the gallery are surrounded by vivid street art, yet inside the space is raw, white, almost ascetic. It proved an apt background for the new show titled Connected. Under the direction of founder Park Choon-moo and now stewarded alongside her son Yoon-Mo Choi, the show unfolded.

A live performance by cellist Lisa Strauss accompanied the show, her resonant phrasing underscoring the collection’s meditative cadence. As guests filtered into the gallery, there was a sense of anticipation about the new collection and the addition of menswear to the label.

And the major shift this season for the label was the formal introduction of a masculine line. Rather than carving out a parallel masculine universe, Park staged an interdependence. Men’s coats echoed the long, architectural lines of the women’s tailoring; women’s trousers borrowed the severity and ease of men’s suiting. The runway suggested a continuum, siblings rather than opposites.

Park, who founded Démoo on Seoul in 1988, has long occupied a singular position within Korean fashion. Decades before Seoul’s designers became fixtures on European schedules, she was refining a vocabulary of disciplined silhouettes and tonal restraint. Her reputation as a pioneer of Korean avant-garde design precedes her Paris return.

Rather than carve out a parallel masculine universe for her new menswear line, Park Choon-moo created an interdependence with women’s tailoring 

Black was back in Milan & Paris

 this season, but has long been a

staple in Démoo's collections. 

The designer's signature black, formed the gravitational centre of the collection and captured this season's monochrome zeitgeist in Milan and Paris. But it was not monolithic. Matte wool absorbed the light; lacquered leather reflected it; sheer knits revealed the negative space beneath. 

Charcoal and off-white appeared sparingly, like breaths between sentences. The interplay of opacity and translucency created a subtle choreography as models crossed paths, reinforcing the theme without theatrics.

Cut was paramount. Jackets curved away before tapering down with architectural precision. Sleeves were elongated, sometimes pooling at the wrist, sometimes sliced open to reveal a flicker of lining. 

Trousers fell in clean vertical planes, interrupted only by a deliberate seam or a suspended panel. Even denim, introduced in several looks, was treated with restraint, washed to a depth that maintained the collection’s tonal integrity.

In an era calibrated for viral moments, Park continues to design in a way that is both thoughtful, poetic and avant-garde. Paris, famously unforgiving, has little patience for tentative statements. Démoo instead offered a composed, assured collection, showing how reduction can be radical, that black can be expansive, and that 'connection' as a concept works.

Scroll down to see highlights from Démoo's AW26/27 show in Paris and exclusive pictures backstage 

Backstage at the Démoo AW26/27 show during Paris Fashion Week