Eudon Choi: Galaxy Quest

"I took the audience to Antarctica last season, and now I'm taking them to space," jokes Eudon Choi. The 34-year-old designer is referring to his spring collection, an outer-limits odyssey inspired by Kubrick, which came on the heels of a polar exploration–themed fall offering. (Sample piece: the Shackleton coat, named after Ernest Shackleton, the early-twentieth-century British explorer who made expeditions to the South Pole.) Choi's spring lineup, shown in London last September, was an immersion in a particularly '60s brand of retro futurism: fresh windowpane checks, generously sleeved boxy tops in slick patent leather, jaunty pillbox hats, and jumpsuits worked in shiny lunar silver.

Sharp ankle-strap pumps made in collaboration with cobbler Joanne Stoker and fold-over purses by handbag designer Thomas Blakk completed the ultramod picture. These are the kind of clothes that the '60s' Germanic Amazon model Veruschka, whom the designer calls his muse, could have posed in on a photo shoot featuring bubble chairs and smooth lounge music. Still, the collection wasn't a complete blast from the past: "I was creating something quite modern," he says, "just by twisting some things or pinching here or there to create a 3-D effect.

On the hanger it maybe looks kind of 2-D, but actually when you wear it, it becomes quite flattering and more 3-D." (In other words, no space-age cocoon frocks here.) And the overall aesthetic is modern enough for even the most outlandish of pop stars—Lady Gaga called in a raft of pieces, and Ellie Goulding, Jessie J, and Delilah have all worn his wares. Born in Korea, the designer earned a bachelor's degree and a master's in clothing and textile from Yonsei University in Seoul. After working as an assistant menswear designer at Time, a Korean brand, he decided to change both countries and fields, relocating to England in 2003 to pursue an MA in women's wear at the Royal College of Art. "It's not that I don't respect menswear, but you can just do more in women's wear," Choi says. "I could do more experimental stuff."

Stints as a senior designer at both AllSaints and Twenty8Twelve, the label founded by sisters Sienna and Savannah Miller, followed, but when the designer struck out on his own four years ago, he took aim at a more luxurious echelon of the market: His designs range in price from $265 to $2,000. (The namesake collection is sold at Secret Location in Vancouver, The Shop at Bluebird in London, and 10 Corso Como in Seoul, and on Avenue32.com.) While his inspirations are certainly creative, the most striking thing about Choi is his left-brain side. Plenty of designers coast like absentminded professors, happy to live in a world of mood boards and daydreams. Not Choi. Coming from a family of dentists, he takes an almost clinical approach to his craft, to the point where one could imagine him mapping out patterns with a scalpel. This exactitude can be seen in everything from the sharp slits to the geometric patchworking in color-field patterns.

A self-described control freak, he cuts all his own patterns and even fills out every invoice. "It's a very small team that I work with, so I just need to manage everything, from A to Z," he says. Choi's East London studio is in Dalston, the neighborhood shared by fellow London up-and-comers Peter Pilotto and Roksanda Ilincic, but Choi says he doesn't fraternize with his fellow Brit designers. "Basically, I'm working seven days a week," he says, describing his daily routine as "work-home-work-home." His fall collection is inspired by Russian folk art—a re-watch of Doctor Zhivago is in order, he says.

A collaboration with Swarovksi, as part of the brand's designer collective, is in the offing for fall as well, along with a hat collaboration with Piers Atkinson, the milliner behind Anna Dello Russo's miniature crowns. With all of that exposure, this spotlight-shunning young designer's profile is about to rise, whether he likes it or not.