There are artists who wear fashion, and then there is YEJI — who makes fashion feel like a second language she has always been fluent in. This autumn, Roger Vivier speaks it right back to her.
An Autumn Built for Someone Like Her
Roger Vivier’s Autumn 2026 campaign arrives not as a collection announcement but as a declaration. Conceived by Creative Director Gherardo Felloni, it is the house’s most emotionally precise work in years — a study in tension and grace, in restraint that burns at the edges. And at its centre: YEJI, the ITZY leader who has spent the past two years becoming one of the most compelling fashion presences in the world.
The partnership between YEJI and Roger Vivier began with her appointment as Korea Brand Ambassador in early 2025, quickly deepening into a global role by November of that year. She walked the Maison Vivier grand opening in Paris. She sat front row at the AW26 show in March 2026 at Paris Fashion Week. Each appearance tightened the creative bond — until Felloni’s autumn vision and YEJI’s singular presence arrived at the same coordinates.
From Debut to Dominant: The YEJI Arc
Hwang Yeji debuted with ITZY on February 12, 2019, arriving with a group built on the radical premise that teenagers should love themselves as they are. It was a thesis that needed a protagonist — and YEJI, as leader, became one instinctively. Her stage presence was never polished into softness. It was kinetic, almost feral in its precision, the kind of performance energy that doesn’t translate into words but stops a room.
By 2025 she had done something harder than a debut: she launched a solo career on her own terms. Her mini album AIR, released March 10, 2025, arrived as a dark electro-pop statement — four tracks that moved through synth-pop dreamscapes into raw electronica. NME ranked the title single among the best K-pop songs of the year, describing it as “one of 2025’s most satisfying surprises.” YEJI had written into her own mythology, and the fashion world leaned in closer.
“YEJI has become an icon for a new generation of fashion-forward individuals, embodying a bold and contemporary vision of style which perfectly aligns with the Maison’s heritage of elegance, creativity, and innovation.” – Roger Vivier — Official Statement
She Doesn’t Wear It. She Speaks It.
YEJI’s fashion story has never been about following a trend cycle. From her early ITZY era — sharp-edged streetwear shot through with deliberate rebellion — to her appearances at Dolce & Gabbana’s Milan shows, her Roger Vivier Paris front rows, and the 2026 Marie Claire shoot that stopped timelines worldwide, she has treated every look as a compositional choice. A sentence in an ongoing essay about identity, desire, and power.
Felloni understands this. His Roger Vivier has always been about the alchemy of refinement — woven raffia and crystal buckles, tailored silhouettes and tactile surfaces that demand to be touched. YEJI’s autumn campaign imagery plays this language fluently: the Maison’s heritage pieces — the Belle Vivier slingback, the RV-monogrammed accessories — are not props but punctuation marks in a visual story she is writing in real time.
MIDZY Always Knew
There is a particular ITZY fan — a MIDZY — who has been calling YEJI a fashion icon since 2019. The broader world is only now agreeing. The YEJI Day trending events on X, the support campaigns coordinated across time zones, the fan edits that circulate before official campaign imagery even drops — these are not peripheral to YEJI’s cultural force. They are central to it. The fandom and the artist are in a continuous creative loop, each reflecting the other’s highest aspirations back.
The Roger Vivier global ambassadorship is not just a career milestone — it is a validation of what MIDZY have been saying in voting threads and streaming parties for seven years. YEJI’s stage presence, her unwillingness to be flattened into a type, her sheer exactness in everything she produces — it was always going to translate into this. Luxury fashion didn’t discover her. It finally caught up.
Sound, Sight, and the YEJI Continuum
What makes YEJI singular in the current K-pop landscape is her refusal to let any one medium define her. She is a vocalist who writes her own lyrics. A dancer whose choreographic intelligence informs every visual project she enters. A performer whose musicality shapes how she occupies space — on stage, in a campaign frame, at a Parisian photocall. AIR wasn’t just a debut EP; it was a proof-of-concept that her artistic universe holds together across formats.
The Autumn 2026 Roger Vivier campaign continues this logic. Felloni’s creative direction and YEJI’s embodied artistry create a campaign that functions cinematically — less a product showcase than a short film about what it feels like to move through the world with intention. In an era of K-pop that is increasingly about visual world-building, YEJI is not building a world. She is the world. The Maison simply gave it a very beautiful address.
“There are artists who perform a look. YEJI inhabits one. The difference is the difference between a photograph and a memory.”
Kpoppie Editorial — Autumn 2026
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Credits & Rights
Publication: Kpoppie Magazine — K-pop & Fashion Editorial
Publisher: Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited, Japan / New Zealand
Editorial Direction: Kpoppie Magazine Editorial Team
Campaign in L’OFFICIEL SINGAPORE : Roger Vivier Autumn 2026 — conceived by Creative Director Gherardo Felloni. Starring YEJI (Hwang Yeji), Global Brand Ambassador, Roger Vivier. YEJI is a member of ITZY, managed by JYP Entertainment.
Campaign Photography: © Roger Vivier / All Roger Vivier campaign imagery rights reserved to Roger Vivier (Tod’s Group). Reproduced for editorial commentary purposes only.
Editorial Text: © 2026 Kpoppie Magazine / Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited. All rights reserved. This editorial content is protected under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Unauthorised reproduction, distribution, or republication of this editorial in whole or in part, in any form or medium, is strictly prohibited without prior written consent from the publisher.
Artist Credits: YEJI (Hwang Yeji) / ITZY © JYP Entertainment. All artist-related trademarks, images, and likenesses are the property of their respective rights holders.
Brand Credits: Roger Vivier is a trademark of Roger Vivier (Tod’s Group). All brand references are used for editorial identification purposes.
Kpoppie Magazine is published by Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited (Japan / New Zealand). For editorial enquiries: editorial@kpoppie.com · kpoppie.com
“There are artists who perform a look. YEJI inhabits one. The difference is the difference between a photograph and a memory.”
Kpoppie Editorial — Autumn 2026