Lone Costume Fall 2006 by Jung Wook Jun

[djrajio]

Good point. I don't know much about women's Korean fashion...

[dismalfuture]

But as for Korean fashion... I've seen a variety of S. Korean designers that have unique and forward-thinking collections that do a great job of conveying a distinctly Korean cultural influence, unfortunately they all do women's wear.[/url]

Despite the fact that I don't know too much about Korean or Japanese women's high fashion, I'm gonna use this to jump off to my ongoing theory about how traditional wear has influenced the respective modern clothing culture from street level.

My points to make:

The Korean traditional dress, hanbok/chogori, cinches tightly at or above the bust, and from there flares out massively. Usually comprised of three main parts- jacket, inner blouse, and skirt. In essence, you see no real form, merely an illusion of femininity. Shoes are closed, woven jobs. The bell-shape of the skirt portion also allows for a wide, natural gait.

Japanese traditional dresses like kimono or yukata get belted at the waist, with a slimmer silhouette both top and bottom, in my opinion showing a female form better, though men and women wear similar yukata, whereas ironically Korean trad dress is gender-specific. Shoes being geta or zori, etc. Wearing the whole ensemble leads to a pigeon-toed gait with short, careful steps, but also a real hinge-effect with the hips twisting while the torso remains straight.

I'm not sure how much of this plays a factor now, but I think at least the styles of walk are pretty locked into their local cultures. I've known many Korean girls born and raised in Japan and they definitely use the Japanese-style gait. More loosely, tastes in clothing and guidelines of what is acceptable are also kind of still defined by traditional dress, especially in Korea. I don't know how much locals from each country would admit to this, but everything from cuts and lines, they're very similar in terms of what trends local girls latch onto and what trends they reject en masse.

Up until a couple years ago, wearing flip-flop/thong sandals in public in Korea probably had people thinking you were Japanese, and were also deemed inappropriate footwear. I don't think they were deemed inappropriate so much because they were open shoes, but because instead of the more-accepted slide/shower sandals (the $2 adilette-style that are allowed to be worn with your suit while inside the office, and out, if you're just slobby), the flip-flop splits the toes like Geta or Zori, which is a sore point for Koreans. The derogatory term for Japanese people in Korean is 'pig foot,' relating directly to this. There's a few other examples of little things like this that go around here.

However, I still contend that if one were to spend a day in both countries back to back and just took note of silhouettes, gaits, etc, you'd probably find some truth in what I'm saying.

I know this is all probably sounding neurotic at this point, but honestly, people will ask Asian people if they can tell the difference between different kinds of Asians, even Asian people themselves ask this question. If I can't look at a girls face and tell from her hair and makeup, then I refer straight to the gait and the way she wears her clothes and I usually am spot-on.

Anyhow, on topic and how this all relates is that I don't really find Korean women's fashion too great. If I were a woman I'd probably just bite on Japanese styles night and day. Really all of the little nitpicks in this thread apply to Korean women's fashion as well, it's all just a mashup of foreign styles then cut down to Korean sizes and conservatism, that being what parts of the body they can't show thereby hacking clothing styles to do more coverage. Look at that carrie1's posts and website and see how dull and nunnish Korean women's cuts and styles are, and then see how much color and more coverup with accessories, etc, they use to compensate. I don't really think this is an issue of modernity of clothing, it's one of those things where priority is placed on points other than silhouette, which the respected countries into fashion have already figured out is key to looking good.

[djrajio]

I know this is all probably sounding neurotic at this point, but honestly, people will ask Asian people if they can tell the difference between different kinds of Asians, even Asian people themselves ask this question. If I can't look at a girls face and tell from her hair and makeup, then I refer straight to the gait and the way she wears her clothes and I usually am spot-on.

Absolutely. A few days ago I exited the gym and noticed two girls walking with an usual gait and were sporting DKNY bags. DKNY used to be very popular with Koreans a few years back but the label never caught on in Japan because it was too somber and simplified for Japanese tastes. I knew right then and there the girls were Korean.

Having lived in LA and various parts of Asia, I can definitely tell the difference between different Asian races; its sort of instinctual.

[Konfucius]

http://www.firstview.com/WRTWfall2006/LONE_COSTUME_JUNG_WOOK_JUN/00036.L.JPG

Good shit on the left there. I don't care if it's not overly "original".. I like that get-up because of the way it was put together

[RobbertJan]

thanks for the insights dismalfuture and djrajio

i think quite a few pieces are wearable and look good. though as said it's pretty much all a rip-off of stuff we've seen. and as a collection it's definetly crap, their's so much diversity in the styles etc. that the collection doesn't show the designer has his own aesthetic or vision. that's the whole purpose of a collection right, to show a designers vision, this more looks like the designer threw in all trends.

[echoepidemic]

I still want to know where to get a pair of those sneakers.