Bajowoo (사용자명: 99%IS-) was founded in Seoul in 2012 by Bajowoo Park, a Korean designer who emerged from the city's hardcore punk and DIY hand-tailoring scene rather than from the conventional fashion-school pipeline. The brand's vocabulary—skinny black bondage trousers with multiple straps, leather D-ring belts piled at the waist, distressed punk graphics screened over Japanese cotton t-shirts, and razor-sharp knife-pleated kilts—drew directly from Park's years stitching custom pieces for Seoul's underground music scene before any formal label existed.
The 99%IS- name encoded the brand's stance: the 1% being mainstream fashion industry, the 99% being everyone else, with the dash holding space for whatever the wearer brought to the piece. Park built the label up through Seoul's Itaewon and Hongdae punk venues, then through a Dover Street Market pickup in 2015 that pulled the brand into the global pipeline that runs through London, Ginza, and New York. The "Knife Pleat Kilt"—a unisex pleated wool skirt with industrial zippers and adjustable side straps—became the signature, treated as a wardrobe item by collectors who paired it with everything from combat boots to Margiela Tabis.
Bajowoo's longer arc has tracked the broader transformation of Korean independent fashion from a regional curiosity into a globally legible category. The brand collaborated with Vans on Old Skool reissues in heavy black canvas, contributed pieces to Dover Street Market Ginza's seasonal installations, and stocked through international punk-adjacent retailers like Kindergarten in Tokyo, Antonioli in Milan, and SSENSE's curated edge. Although the brand's output has slowed since the late 2010s as Park focused on bespoke commissions and music projects, the archival 99%IS- pieces from the brand's 2014-2018 peak continue to trade actively through Grailed and Japanese resale, with the Knife Pleat Kilt routinely doubling its retail price within the secondary market.
