Mario Dell’Oglio is a fashion buyer from Italy who is on a grand shopping spree at the Seoul Fashion Week. He is the CEO of the Dell’Oglio luxury fashion stores, a family business in Palermo, Italy. He is also president of the Italian Chamber of Fashion Buyers.

After attending a mentoring seminar on “New Luxury” on Thursday, Dell’Oglio met with The Korea Herald to speak about Seoul Fashion Week.

“I really like to come to Korea. I see a stronger energy (compared to other fashion weeks), the willingness to learn, to enhance and to do things better,” Dell’Oglio said.

He has visited Seoul Fashion Week five times, and according to him, every season gets better.

“A lot of designers are very engaged in improvement, having a great desire to grow. This is fantastic energy for people like me,” he said.

He selected Blindness as the local fashion brand he is keeping an eye on. The high-end brand, led by designers Park Ji-sun and Shin Kyu-yong, pursues genderless fashion, destroying barriers between masculinity and femininity.

“Their interpretation of genderless, the way of expressing their ideas, is exceptional,” the big player in Italia’s luxury fashion industry said. “It is a very contemporary, open-minded proposal, where creativity plays a bigger role.”

Dell’Oglio has been attending seven shows per day in Seoul. Spending his whole day watching runways, he has grasped “an average idea” of fashion week here.

“The average quality of the shows have grown for the past years, their presentation gets better, their collection is more focused, their message is clearer,” he said.

(silverstar@heraldcorp.com)