Hyunjin: The Prince of Versace

With K-pop stars commanding adulation that is off the charts, it's no surprise that major brands are keen for a piece of the action. Recently signed up by Versace as one of its ambassadors, Hyunjin from K-pop sensation Stray Kids chats to Rolling Stone UK about style, his favourite Stray Kids song and which of his band members is "a very naughty boy"

- By Joseph Kocharian

BACK IN SEPTEMBER, I witnessed the phenomenal popularity of K-pop when I attended Paris Fashion Week. The crowds of fans waiting for their idols to arrive to watch a show were so big that they blocked the roads. While sitting inside waiting for the runway to start, I could gauge when a K-pop idol had appeared due to the enormous cheers that erupted outside, rivalling only those heard at the Super Bowl. This is regular behaviour for K-pop fans — they descend en masse on locations where their heroes might be in the hope of catching a glimpse of their idols, or to scream incoherently with joy at spotting their ‘bias’ (the term for a favourite band member).

With their high production values and equally high-octane energy, eight-piece band Stray Kids are one of the K-pop groups who can command the level of adulation experienced by One Direction and the Spice Girls, and which K-pop acts BlackPink and BTS still enjoy. The band — whose members are Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, HAN, Felix, Seungmin, I.N and Hyunjin — are racking up record-breaking streams and physical sales for their songs, amassing hundreds of millions of views with their dynamic music videos and performing in front of huge crowds in sold-out arenas. In June, their latest album 5-STAR earned them their third number one on the Billboard 200.