Introducing the best menswear brand you’ve never heard of – available this week on MR PORTER.

According to conventional wisdom, the fashion industry revolves around four major centres of gravity: Paris, Milan, London and New York. Home to the biggest brands, the most influential magazines and the most high-profile trade shows, these cities – sometimes referred to as the “big four” – are generally regarded as setting the pace for the rest of the industry to follow. Though this may be true, nobody saw fit to inform Ms Woo Youngmi, a designer who has spent the last three decades quietly defining her own distinctive vision of men’s style from her home town of Seoul, South Korea.

If the name rings a bell, that’s probably because you’ve heard of her eponymous brand, the Paris-based Wooyoungmi, which launched in 2002 and quickly found popularity with an international audience of well-dressed men for its precise, detail-oriented menswear, which blends sharp tailoring with elements of sportswear. But Wooyoungmi is very much the second act in a career that began 14 years earlier with her first menswear line, Solid Homme, which makes its long-awaited debut on MR PORTER this week.

Launched in 1988, at a time when men’s fashion was less than a minority interest in South Korea, Solid Homme rode a wave of huge economic expansion that coincided with that year’s Olympic Games in Seoul to become one of the country’s best-loved men’s brands. Despite all of its success, though, it has taken nearly three decades for it to expand outside of its native market. Why then has Solid Homme chosen this moment to make the leap and go global?

“It was clear when I joined the company that it was ready for expansion,” says Ms Caroline Kim, who took up the position of COO for Solid Homme in 2013, after stints at MCM, LG Electronics and Mercedes-Benz, and has spearheaded its move into the global market. “There was a strong team in place and we knew there was demand from customers outside of Korea who had discovered the brand online or while visiting Seoul. Above all, we knew that there was a gap in the market for Madame Woo’s vision.”

Fans of Wooyoungmi will already be familiar with that vision – a clever fusion of athletic apparel, tailoring and high fashion. But where the namesake brand’s often avant-garde leanings cater to a more artistic, sartorially daring customer, Solid Homme positions itself as “answering the call of the modern urbanite”.

This, admittedly hazy, definition is perhaps more eloquently expressed by the clothes themselves – a range of fine woolen tracksuit jackets, suede bombers, neoprene sweaters and cuffed woolen sweatpants that, when thrown together, form a look that wouldn’t seem out of place on the streets of Paris, Milan, London or New York (or, indeed, Seoul). Standout pieces come in the form of shirts and knitwear emboldened with graphic prints inspired by the abstract cut-out work of Mr Henri Matisse in the 1950s and reimagined in a range of autumnal shades.

“One of the key pieces for me was the bouclé overcoat,” says MR PORTER’s Style Director Mr Olie Arnold. “It’s designed to be dressed up or down as you see fit. The team at Solid Homme are masters at blending a strong sportswear aesthetic with a refined, luxurious finish. They always manage to strike the perfect balance between a casual, relaxed fit and a more directional, modern look. I’ve got no doubt that it’ll resonate with the MR PORTER customer, especially given the previous success of our capsule collection with Wooyoungmi.”

In short, what lucky modern urbanites we are, even if we do wish that Solid Homme had answered our call a little earlier.