PETER KOR: At 75, master designer can't stop, won't stop

The most reclusive of the Magnificent Seven group of elite designers, Peter Kor, tired of retirement fast.

- Carmen Sin

He had attempted to give up the rag trade in 2021, after an unhappy partnership with his then-investor. But by the close of 2023, he was back at the drawing board for another crack at the old game.

The 75-year-old's resurrected namesake label is now stocked at multi-brand retailer Dors, his clean lines and deft braiding of East and West sensibilities firmly intact.

It is, by Kor's own admission, late in the day to sugarcoat things. Breaking into Mandarin, he says: "At my age, you no longer have a future, only a past. It's pessimistic, but it is precisely when you don't have enough time that you must give it your all till the end."

It is still sweet, though.

Even with a $100,000 outlay and no profit to speak of yet, Kor is enjoying, for the first time in his 50-year career, a strange new freedom. "Maybe it's my age, but I'm very relaxed about things," he says.

In his monthly capsule collections of some six to eight designs, mostly priced between $100 and $300, he is relishing playfulness. He hazards a pair of pure linen Korean monk-type pants here, an offbeat wrap jacket there. "There's no pressure," he adds.

This is the man who beavered away for over 10 years as a ghost designer for department store brands, refusing to strike out on his own until 1988, when he felt he was "good enough" to put his name to something.