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| A lovely, quirky, and frankly a tad awkward fashion-obsessed high school girl several seasons ago. I photographed her when she was sewing her own hats and dresses by hand. I know she's been working, but haven't seen her in years. Now her length of bone has served her well, as she has lost about 25 pounds and gotten into an agency. She told me she walked at 11 shows this Fashion Week. All photos by Michael Hurt |
By Michael Hurt
I just finished covering Seoul Fashion Week, and man now at Vietnam International Fashion Week to look at the fashion and Korean influence on it, which I have seen and been told is considerable.
Rather than extended prose description, I will allow the photos and captions from Instagram to speak for themselves.
Enjoy the pictures and I will leave you with the paraphrased words of ur-anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss: "Korean fashion is good to think [with]."
The point when Levi-Strauss wrote this was that the significance of animals on a totem pole was not that they tasted good and hence warranted being graven into wood for all to see in the same way we see happy cartoon pigs marching off their own slaughter on bright signboards for a sampgyeopsal restaurant in this culture, but rather that for the people who carved animal faces as totemic objects, they were actually good ways to think about things in life, almost like a life maxim made through an animal face.
An easy way to think about it would be "In business, be a fox. Think foxy," coupled with a picture of a fox as your company mascot. In a culture that produces totem poles, the way to understand the animals engraved there is as symbols with which to think about life.
In a similar way, when we look at fashion and fashioned objects in consumer societies such as in South Korea now, fashion is more than just an object of consumption. When read through the lens of culture, "Fashion is good to think."
So I have been doing a lot of thinking.
And by extension, as a way to think about Korean society, "Korean street fashion is good to think."
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| Squad!! The theme for this fashion squad was TECH WEAR. Basically, pro-level matching. Seen lots of fashion crews doing this the last few seasons. Gave me an S1Ws kind of vibe. I was feeling it. |
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| Super on-trend. That long pleated skirt has been the thing for classy girls, along with that bloafer, the mule+slipper. |
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| Cheetah print is in. It has always been a little in, but there has been an explosion from around this September. Hence you have a lot of earth tones like browns and things. But this young woman from Hong Kong did not go that way. |
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| Baby SUPREME. |
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| Taiwanese girls rocking the Nike Air Max 97s and Gucci Bees. Their matching asymmetrical dresses and leather rider jackets were Kool and the Gang, but the shoes . . . |
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| Mothaf―kin' fabulous. Sorry, but you can KEEP your fancy foreign brands. Give me domestic Korean "wonderland" fashion ALL DAY. This Ewha Women's University Fashion Design major had just come out of the LANG&LU show rocking their stuff. I was so happy to capture this look because I NEVER get the femmey fashions because those girls never agree to pose. But she was at fashion week to see and be seen, so I was able to get THAT LOOK, which is so unequivocally Korean in its unapologetic hyperfemininity that is so WINKWINK over-the-top that it knows you know she knows you know this is damn near high Irony. There is nothing more Korean than this look, right down to the thick stockings with sandal heels. And the sartorial logic that posits that the aggressively demure outer top cancels out the fact she's wearing just a black bra visible through a sheer top. It violates all kinds of traditional fashion codes with both a sneer and a wink. This kind of sartorial code-smashing is ingenious ― and it happens to be the very way K-POP videos sneered, slinked, and code-smashed themselves into a globe-conquering, pop culture juggernaut. |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Michael W. Hurt (@kuraeji on Instagram) is a photographer and professor living in Seoul. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley's Department of Ethnic Studies and started Korea's first street fashion blog in 2006. He researches youth, subcultures and street fashion as a research professor at the University of Seoul and also writes on visual sociology and cultural studies at his blog and book development site Deconstructing Korea. His PR/image curation company Iconology Korea also engages in an effort to positively shape images of social others in Korea, construct a positive face for Korea-based or Korea-interested clients, and positive images of Korea in the world. (Instagram @IconologyKorea)
