Growing up the youngest daughter of a fisherman, Korean-born Suk Chai’s wardrobe was not her own. It was oldest brother’s first, and then the next brother’s, and then her sister’s — but waiting taught her about timeless silhouettes and the value of materials. By the mid-90s Chai was a young single mother putting herself through design school in New York.   Her own clothes came from 10-dollar stores, but her dreams came from the then-dying legendary houses of Givenchy and Alaia. After school, the award-winning FIT graduate spent twenty years designing, directing, and producing womenswear for elite brands —fourteen of those years at Nordstrom, innovating and exacting for the luxury department store clientele — but swift and steady success in the industry eventually gave way to a boomerang. She began to see fashion as a surface-level art form, and ultimately vacated her coveted senior design director position. It wasn’t until a chance encounter with the rich cashmere of a Lanvin coat, some two years later, that the soulfulness of refined fibers and precision craft pulled her back in.