Cover Cortis at Paris Fashion Week, attending the Dior show, as part of their fast-expanding 2026 brand roster (Photo: @cortis/Instagram)
Cortis at Paris Fashion Week, attending the Dior show, as part of their fast-expanding 2026 brand roster (Photo: @cortis/Instagram)
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From front-row seats at Dior and Saint Laurent to sold-out K-beauty campaigns, Cortis is proving fashion’s biggest houses no longer wait for a K-pop act to mature
Most K-pop acts spend years building a profile before luxury houses, beauty brands and major sports platforms come calling. Cortis compressed that timeline into less than a year. Barely ten months after their August 2025 debut—and following the chart success of their single RedRed—the five-member BigHit Music group, Martin, James, Juhoon, Seonghyeon and Keonho, had already appeared across two Paris fashion shows, fronted a fermentation-focused skincare campaign for an LVMH beauty house and headlined NBA All-Star weekend.
The breadth is as striking as the speed: a self-produced, genre-blurring group finding footholds across fashion, beauty and sport as brands compete for the attention of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Here is a closer look at the global names already working with Cortis, and what each partnership involves.
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1. Juhoon, Seonghyeon and Keonho lead Cortis’s Dior takeover at Paris Fashion Week
At Paris Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2027, Juhoon, Seonghyeon and Keonho attended the Dior show styled in Jonathan Anderson’s tailored menswear. It built on a January 2026 Seoul appearance where the full group wore Dior SS26, translating their skate-punk edge into structured tailoring. The split casting for the season—three members for Dior, two for Saint Laurent—let each house test its own reading of the group, a strategy usually reserved for far more established acts.
2. Martin and James bring rock-edged grunge to Saint Laurent’s Paris runway
While their bandmates sat with Dior, leader Martin and member James took their seats at Saint Laurent’s SS27 presentation, aligning with the house’s sharper, rock-infused silhouette. The pairing suits Martin in particular, whose personal style has also been spotlighted by Vivienne Westwood Korea for its punk-leaning edge. Together, the two Paris showings gave Cortis simultaneous representation across two of fashion’s most contrasting codes within a single season.
3. Cortis fronts Fresh’s global fermentation skincare campaign
Since April 2026, Cortis has fronted Fresh’s international “Go Wild with Fermentation” campaign, promoting the LVMH-owned label’s Kombucha Facial Treatment Essence and Kombucha Antioxidant UV Defense Sunscreen. The rollout pairs digital storytelling with large-scale outdoor takeovers across major Asian cities, including Chengdu. For a group barely a year into their career, a global ambassadorship with a luxury conglomerate skincare house signals just how quickly beauty brands are willing to move on proven youth appeal.
4. Cortis headlines Torriden’s K-beauty pop-up experience in Seongsu, Seoul
From March to May 2026, Torriden Connect Seongsu hosted the “Torriden with Cortis” pop-up, turning a derma-cosmetic brand partnership into a full destination. The space offered immersive product testing, customised photo zones and limited-edition merchandise aimed at local fans and K-beauty tourists alike. Unlike the group’s fashion and sports tie-ins, this was a collaboration fans could step into.
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5. Cortis is the new face of Acuvue’s Oasys 1-Day contact lenses
Johnson & Johnson’s vision care brand Acuvue named Cortis brand ambassadors for its Oasys 1-Day line in early 2026, with the campaign rolling out across television and print. The messaging leans into active-lifestyle comfort and visual clarity—an everyday, practical category that rounds out a portfolio otherwise dominated by luxury fashion and sports, and one that keeps the group visible in markets beyond entertainment coverage.
6. Cortis is the NBA’s official ‘Friends of the NBA’ act in Asia-Pacific
Above Cortis performs at the halftime show of the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game at the Kia Forum
In January 2026, the NBA named Cortis “Friends of the NBA” across Asia-Pacific, a title that quickly translated into real stage time. The group became the first K-pop act to headline the NBA Crossover Concert Series in Los Angeles, then performed the halftime show at the Ruffles NBA All-Star Celebrity Game at the Kia Forum, broadcast globally on ESPN. The alliance also spans co-branded apparel and digital content, positioning Cortis as the league’s bridge into K-pop-driven youth culture.
7. Cortis leads KT Corporation’s iPhone 17 Pro and World Cup campaigns
Above Cortis fronted KT’s national cheering campaign for the South Korean football team
In South Korea, Cortis anchors KT Corporation’s flagship campaign for Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro, which pairs pre-order incentives with a multi-platform rollout. During the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the group also fronted KT’s national cheering campaign for the South Korea football team, including live rallies at Gwanghwamun Square—cementing their reach well past music and fashion audiences.
8. Cortis’s ‘Go!’ becomes a ‘Fortnite’ emote and an ‘NBA 2K26’ soundtrack pick
Above Cortis’s choreography from ‘Go!’ lands as an official ‘Fortnite’ emote
Epic Games turned the choreography from Cortis’s Go! into an official global dance emote inside Fortnite, while Take-Two Interactive selected the track—remixed by leader Martin—for the season four soundtrack of NBA 2K26. Both deals extend the group’s NBA ties into interactive gaming, reaching audiences who may never stream a K-pop track but will hear, and dance to, Cortis inside the games they already play daily.
9. Cortis records ‘Mention Me’ for Stephen Curry’s animated film ‘Goat’
Above Cortis lends an original track to Stephen Curry's film 'Goat'
Cortis recorded Mention Me, an original song for Sony Pictures Animation’s sports feature Goat, co-produced by and starring NBA star Stephen Curry. It is a natural extension of their basketball-world ties, folding the group into a major animated release rather than a one-off promotional single, and further reinforcing how deliberately their NBA relationship has been built out across sports, gaming and now film.
10. Cortis remains Red Bull’s first-ever official K-pop brand partner
Launched in late 2025, Cortis’s partnership with Red Bull continued into 2026 as the energy drink giant’s first official collaboration with a K-pop act. The tie-up was activated globally at the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final in Los Angeles, anchoring Cortis within international street dance and urban lifestyle culture—a category few K-pop acts, let alone rookies, have entered so directly.
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After more than a decade in lifestyle media, Clifford has mastered the art of writing seriously about things that are fun—and writing fun things about people who take themselves very seriously. At Tatler Asia, he helped steer its flagship lists, Tatler’s Most Influential and Asia’s Most Stylish. And today, he leads T-Labs, Tatler Asia’s content innovation hub, where he continues the noble pursuit of lifestyle storytelling, spinning stories on wealth, entertainment, necessary style, Hallyu, Hollywood, beauty and more for audiences across Asia.
