Is the future face of American fashion ... Korean? Consider the following: four out of eight designers chosen by Gen Art, a New York-based fashion incubator, to show their designs in the recent Gen Art Fresh Faces catwalk show were Korean or Korean American. At Parsons The New School for Design, nearly half of the students enrolled in their bachelor of fine arts fashion design programme last year were either Asian or Asian American (with fully 29 per cent of the student population from Korea). And the number of Korean and Korean American students earning a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology rose from 57 to 152 students between autumn 2003 and autumn 2006.

“The number of Korean students has been escalating since the early 1980s,” says Tim Gunn, the former president of Parsons, who is chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne Inc and star of the Bravo network television programme Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style.