On Tuesday the 2nd, Lichting — the annual design award platform showcasing the top graduates from fashion academies across the Netherlands — celebrated its 20th anniversary with another packed show, this time tucking the lightly soaked droves of AFW devotees and bigwigs under the snug arch of the Rijksmuseum’s historic passage. As tradition dictates, the 2026 edition led the night with a solo showcase by last year’s winner, Youngjin Choe. Presented under his label Jinchoe, his collection Shadow Stepping sets out to exonerate the shadows that haunt each of us.
In 2025, Choe’s graduation collection Duality of Light captured the attention of the jury with rich sculptural textures and twisted tailoring. This year, Shadow Stepping saw Choe deepen his exploration of destruction and reconstruction as mutually essential creative forces. The core drive behind probing at pain is a redemptive one: naturally, there can be no light without darkness.
Imposing black silhouettes open the shadow parade, cocooning the body in dense layers of oversized outerwear, shaggy fibres and the tight sheen of leather, before gradually giving way to muted tones of earthy greens, clay and stone, towards the final starkness of an almost pristine white. Throughout this movement, construction itself becomes and remains conspicuous, as protection repeatedly slips into obstruction.
Vertical ribs of fabric retrace and exaggerate the architecture of familiar pieces, hips protrude and harden, panels shift ever so slightly out of place, while layers multiply excessively and then shed again. Eyes disappear behind blindfolds and low-slung headpieces; straps bind and fasten across the body; floor-length coats shelter their wearers while threatening to swallow them whole. The gravity of the situation pulls the weight of ghostly histories all the way down to the shadow-stepping feet: the quintessentially Dutch silhouette of a wooden clog is stretched and sharpened almost cartoonishly in rubbery black and white, lending the collection a strange folkloric undertone.
Rather than attempting to vanquish the shadow, Choe gives it material form with a great sense of persistence — something cumbersome, distorted and quietly beautiful that must be carried along, reshaped, exposed and eventually brought into the light.
Images by Resa Steenvoorden