PARIS, Feb 26, 2006/ FW/ --- Often fashion week starts with a bit of a yawn rather than a bang: young designers showing at venues half filled with friends and family. This season was no exception as the juggernaut that is Paris fashion week has, with most of the world’s press and buyers still making their way over the Alps from Milan, yet to get in gear. However sometimes, just sometimes, you stumble across a diamond amongst the dross and it illuminates the darkness, making you remember why you bothered in the first place. And one of them is Lie Sang Bong.

The notes for Korean designer Lie Sang Bong’s latest offering for Fall/ Winter talked of l’ombre lunaire and looks were emblazoned with Korean Hangul poetry. What these poems spoke of, and what he meant exactly by this Moonlight Shadow, will remain a mystery. What was less of an enigma however was the collection itself that managed to be contemporary while classical, provocative yet, reserved.

The opening exits were realised in woodland prints of grey brown branches against a snow-white background, an ornamentation also used for the stage setting. All articles employed this effect with a short trench, pinched at the waist to give an A-line flare below the belt, covering leggings and thigh-length boots. The silhouette was sexy in its cut but, with the divisions between one item and another blurred by the use of the same material, nothing was given away.

The same technique was used later for a mini dress whose hemline was tucked back up under itself in a way that has been seen on quite a few runways recently – nowhere near the puff ball, but perhaps a proto form of the same procedure.

The detailing story of the season so far however has been the use of variations on the cut of sleeves and shoulders and this collection proved to be no different. Puff shoulders joined a pleated cape section on a purple 1960’s style double-breasted micro dress for example, while elsewhere, baggy upper sleeves were reined in by long ribbon tied cuffs.

Other silhouettes included tone-on-tone mini skirt over leggings combinations, with fitted waistlines giving way to volume in the cut of the upper torso and sleeves.

All in all the collection succeeded in being contemporary and urban while drawing on elements from the past, most notably the Baroque. This was witnessed in the use of ruffled collars and shirtfronts or in the ornate patterned detailing of a dress coat.

Lie Sang Bong may not be a name that is familiar to many outside the closed world of fashion but, if he continues to produce clothes of this quality, all of that could soon change.