Doo-Ri Chung, Fashion Designer

                         
                

Doo-Ri Chung is serious about keeping things straight. “People in the industry feel ‘Oh, it’s fashion, it can be disorganized,’ but it’s a business,” she says. “Having a child made me realize that everything could be running so much more efficiently.” Chung and her husband just welcomed a little boy named Kip, but that hasn’t held her back. She recently moved across town to Murray Hill where she can walk to her midtown office each day. When she first started
her business in 2004, she was pulling a reverse commute to her parent’s basement in New Jersey. Now, Chung’s workspace has her sensibility all over it. There’s a mural by her husband, window shades with words in her handwriting, and a colorful illustration that she says will turn up in a future collection. Chung began her fashion studies as an illustrator and the starting point of this season was the work of English talent Aubrey Beardsley. It’s only a starting point though; Chung doesn’t go for nostalgia. “My girl is modern. I don’t like retro,” she says. She’s also very busy with her line of designs in less expensive fabrics. Underligne was inspired by seeing one of her collections knocked off sometime ago. “So, I thought we should knock ourselves off,” she says of her most popular jersey pieces. “We have all the patterns.”