The secret to the group’s success is much discussed, but one idea comes to the forefront: The startling amount of time and thought that goes into each project. “Our company’s process is to find the things we want to do, then prepare them over a long period of time to launch them properly,” Kim explains. It took two and a half years to prepare Nuflaat’s artfully eccentric dishes and silverware, while Atiissu’s hats spent about a year and a half in development; even the Nudake tea blends went through countless rounds of samples.
“Usually at minimum two years, up to three or four years is about how long we take to prepare,” Kim says. “We’re not geniuses, we’re hard workers,” he adds with another laugh. “But from the outside, you don’t know how long we’ve spent preparing, so it looks like it came out suddenly. It’s not like that.”
Time is a luxury not often afforded in Seoul, and this creative approach is counter to the country’s reputation for impatience and rapid action. Yet it allows Kim and his team to create works of astounding care and beauty, and for Kim to maintain the Gentle Monster worldview. “We do a number of brands, but the core of them is all the same,” he says. To this day, the contradiction embedded in the name Gentle Monster appears everywhere you look. “Contrast and balance are very important,” Kim says. “When you combine the wildness and the sophistication, that’s our company. If it’s just one or the other, I hate it. The wildness and the strange feelings it stirs, yet the sensitivity it has. That’s the core, and it’s my personality.”
“For us, the most important thing is not design, it’s emotion,” he says in sum. Surveying the teahouse, Kim says that amid the provocative art and objects, he hoped for Haus Nowhere to convey a sense of peacefulness, like an act of care for the customers who come there. “I like it here. I’m the type of person that always needs to find a peaceful moment,” he says. “My mind is a little more free. When I was younger, I just studied. But when I started the company, I became more free. ‘Oh, I really like things like this,’ I realized it much later. I think I’m a very lucky man because how many people in the world get to do what they truly love for a living?”
