Heiji Choy Black is one of those people whose finger is always on the pulse of the fashion industry. She is the definition of a trailblazer and trendsetter who also has utilized her amazing eye in fashion for creating sustainable good in the industry she loves so much. Between her role as Style Editor at Chicago Magazine to founding her sustainable fashion line, Jeune Otte, she has made waves in fashion with a lasting impact. Plus, Heiji was one of the first connections Virgil Abloh made in the art and lifestyle space!

If you want to hear more about Heiji’s amazing story and journey in fashion and life, keep reading. Thank you, Heiji, for your amazing words of wisdom! Your go-getter mentality has definitely inspired me to make strides for bettering my community using my strengths and passions.

1. You founded your clothing brand, Jeune Otte, in the fall of 2019, but you have had quite the career in fashion industry before then, including your role as former Style Editor at Chicago Magazine. Tell us about your role in the fashion industry pre-2019 and why you entered the fashion industry to begin with.

Fashion has been a passion of mine ever since I was very little. When I was in third and fourth grade, I was designing my own clothes, and I really wanted to have a future in fashion. My parents had other ideas, and they kind of directed me to think more about business, as is the case with a lot of children of immigrant families. My parents were immigrants in the US, and they really wanted me to do something practical; something that would keep me sustained professionally in their minds, like [being] a doctor or a lawyer or a businessperson. Because I had an interest in foreign cultures, and I spoke Korean, and I was speaking French and German, I decided to go into diplomacy and foreign policy. That led me into management consulting. I worked in Germany first out of college and then for a management consulting company in New York. During that time, I was commuting to Chicago, and when I came to Chicago as an adult, I was just totally blown away by the architecture. I’ve been lucky enough, from a young age, to go to Paris, Japan, Korea, obviously, and it really struck me that Chicago was this really beautifully designed city. It was the birthplace of modern architecture. In my mind, I was like, Oh, this would be such a great city for a lifestyle concept store – like I had seen in Seoul, or Tokyo, or Paris. At a certain point, as I was working as a consultant, I decided that I didn’t want to continue that lifestyle. I was travelling three days a week, every week. I took a big leap and risk and asked my father if I could try opening a boutique in Chicago – a lifestyle boutique like I envisioned. In 2004, I opened the first lifestyle concept store in Chicago. I carried brands that had never been sold in Chicago before, like Isabel Marant. At that time, it was the start of a lot of these young New York brands that were just getting to be known, like Opening Ceremony, and Rag and Bone, and Alexander Wang. I was really lucky that I not only sold the lines, but I got to know a lot of these designers pretty well. That was kind of the beginning of the redirection away from business to fashion.

Because it was a lifestyle store, I would host big parties. Virgil Abloh and I became good friends because I almost ended up hiring him to do the architecture for the store. He was just a student at that time. He would DJ at parties at my store, and I had all these student artists coming in to do drawing parties and what not. The number of artists who are now like big big names in the art world – like Rashid Johnson and Theaster Gates – they would hang out at my store and [we] became friends. It was a really fun moment in time when all of these brilliant young people were in Chicago doing cool things, and I just happened to have this store that I opened that I curated, and it ended up being kind of a hangout place for all these people.

So I did that until 2009, and then I quit because I was about to give birth to my second child, Sebastian. It was 2009. It was right after the big recession, and so I ended up partnering with a friend of mine who used to be an editor at Vogue, Eviana Hartman, and I became her business partner in kind of one of the first sustainable clothing lines that got a lot of recognition. It was called Bodkin. She was actually one of the first recipients of the Vogue Fashion Fund.

So she and I partnered, and we put on a big fashion presentation in New York in the Meat Packing District. It was a really amazing item, but it’s a very stressful industry. The amount of dedication you have to put in is kind of extreme, and my partner decided she just couldn’t stay on that track anymore. We folded Bodkin, sadly, and I ended up getting hired to be the Fashion and Style Director at Chicago Magazine. That was for almost five years. I ended at Chicago Magazine in 2014, and I was trying to figure out what my next move was. I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, and I felt like there was a huge gap in the market place for clothing for teen and tween girls. I heard so many moms telling me it’s so hard to find well-made, beautiful clothing [for teen and tween girls]: it’s either too young or too overly adult. So I started putting together a business plan and started coming up with this concept of teen and tween girls’ clothing line. An old friend of mine, Elise Bergman, who used to have her own clothing line, who was kind of freelancing and doing special projects, and I end up partnering in this clothing line. That was fall 2019, soon after that, as you know, the pandemic began. Nothing was moving. It was crazy because we had such an auspicious, amazing start: we had great trunk shows and sales, and this website, Maisonette.com, started carrying us. Basically, it fell to zero, and we decided, We have all this fabric. We have these sewers who are just sitting idle, and there is this huge need and shortage of masks. So we started making masks for essential workers because we were like, We might as well help people if we are not going to be able to sell our clothes. We can at least do something good. We started making masks and giving them to essential workers. We ended up giving away around 12,000 masks, and we started selling them on our line, and we were like, Ok we have all these adult mostly female customers. We should do something with this. So, we ended up pivoting and we started a small capsule collection of womenswear, and it did extremely well. We were like, Ok I guess. This is what we should be doing. Obviously, we both love fashion. We love creating. We are getting a much better response from our womenswear. This is what we should we doing.

This is what we have been doing. We are growing very steadily. We sell to five stores. Three in the Midwest: one in Chicago, one in southwest Michigan, one in Winnetka, which is a suburb of Chicago. Then we also have a store that we sell to in San Francisco and one that we sell to in Bozeman, Montana. As well as our website obviously.

PS: Heiji informed me that “Jeune” is French for “young,” and “Otte” is Korean for “clothes.”

2. Tell us about how Jeune Otte is sustainable. Has sustainability always been important to you?

Absolutely. As I mentioned, I was previously a partner in one of the first kind of luxury womenswear sustainable lines. I have always tried to be very mindful of my environmental impact and our family’s environmental impact because obviously, as a mother, one of my first priorities is the future of my children. Obviously, the environment plays a huge part in that. I am sure you are aware [that] the fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries on the Earth. There is so much waste that is derived from fast fashion. Companies like H&M and Zara, they literally burn their excess inventory. You can imagine that not only are they emitting excess carbon and probably unsustainable working conditions, but they are also burning the excess inventory, which is so horrific. So, we were like, we can do this in a way where number one, we are super conscious of what kind of fabric and materials we work with and make sure that the people we are working are being paid a living wage, but we can also do this in a way that celebrates where we are from. Step one in trying to minimize our footprint is to make everything locally, so there is not that much shipping involved.

3. What advice can you give to people searching for their sense of style?

I think it is really about exploration. Especially for young people. I feel like I love to see younger people really be fearless in trying styles, genres, eras of fashion. I feel like there is no one great trend that kind of rules all, and I think that is so fun, and I think that as a young person it is so important to just experiment and try and take risks and see what works for you. I also think it is extremely important in developing your style. For me, I have always just been such an observer. I love to read, to see what other people are doing and to study the people I think are the most stylish. What are they doing? How are they wearing their clothes? Where are they getting inspiration from?

4. What is one item currently on your wish list?

I would say that I really love what Hedi Slimane at Celine is doing right now. It’s kind of funny because, initially, I was such a huge fan of Phoebe Philo at Celine, and you know, when Hedi Slimane came in and became the new designer for Celine, I really thought it was like blasphemous. He just ruined it, and I really didn’t like what he was doing there for a while, but I feel like the way he cuts his clothes, his designs, and his sensibility are totally speaking to me now. I feel like it goes to show you, you can poo-poo or dislike someone, but everything is temporary and always changing. You can say you don’t like this designer one day, but you always just have to have an open mind!

5. What is next for Jeune Otte?

We are just trying to build more stores around the US and build relationships with more stores. We really want to be in New York, obviously, as it is the capital of fashion in the United States. We really want to be in LA, which we have been, but [we want to] have more of a permanent home there. So yeah, those are the two things that are kind of on our list in terms of where we want to go and where we want to meet new clients.

RAPID FIRE:

1. What advice would you give to your 17-year-old self?

Always be curious. Never stop being curious.

2. What is your motto?

Functionality is key.

3. What is the quality you most admire about yourself?

Hmm that’s a hard one! I guess for me too, I am always looking for what’s new. I am tirelessly curious.

4. What is the quality you most admire in others?

Self-deprecation. Knowing how to make fun of yourself.

5. Chocolate or vanilla?

Vanilla.