The Hub of Sparkle!

This article is cross-posted from FeetManSeoul.com.

It’s almost here again, people! Seoul Fashion Week is almost upon us, coming to the SETEC center (outside of the Hakyeoul subway station on the Orange #3 line), from October 18-25th.

What is Seoul Fashion Week, you ask? Well, it’s the time, twice a year, usually in late October and late March in Korea’s case, when the hottest and most established designers show together in a display of what’s hot, what’s new, what’s representative of the Korean fashion world. Just like you have New York, Paris, Milan, or Tokyo fashion weeks, Seoul has its own thang going on, too.

It is also referred to as the “Seoul Collection” fashion show, but the organizers have very pointedly started to refer to it as “Seoul Fashion Week” from two seasons ago, and really started doing its marketing materials and officially referring to itself exclusively with the term “Seoul Fashion Week” from only last season. Even the season before that, the marketing went out as the “Seoul Collection” fashion show, and there was some confusion in the market about that. But from this time around, it’s “Seoul Fashion Week” with the following season’s time marker.¹ So, Seoul Fashion Week S/S 09 is now definitely upon us!

But is Korean fashion really that hot? Why is the city government pumping so much money into the Seoul Fashion Week lately and why are people in other countries talking about Korean fashion these days? For those new to the high fashion scene, or even Korea itself, this might seem to be a perplexing problem. But to those with a foot inside fashion, or who’ve been in Korea for a long time, things are changing pretty fast, and Korean fashion, whether on the runway or the street, is seeing some pretty monumental changes.

Sure, some might pooh-pooh the conformity that still does and always will exist to some extent in Korea, but compared to the times of uniform black, white, and gray that was only sometimes broken by muted primary colors on jackets or a few accessories — the last three years or so has been like a Cambrian explosion in fashion evolutionary terms. If you remember your Darwin, it’s not a singular forward step taken by a pre-selected few that drives evolution forward, but rather the sheer numbers of various types, styles, peculiar mutations, and other random permutations that makes for evolutionary progress.

And the recent fashion explosion, with increasingly more varieties of style on the streets, with people feeling free to really push the boundaries and try wilder things — this is what makes the fashion environment here better for everyone. It is in such an environment that a “Korean wave” (for film) was able to happen, when censorship was lifted and artistic expression found itself given room to breathe. It is in a similar environment that a “Korean fashion wave” might be able to happen.

Like to know more? There’s an even longer, more in-depth version of this article over at FeetManSeoul.com.

1. For fashion world neophytes, “S/S” means “Spring/Summer” and “F/W” means “Fall/Winter,” and if a show is actually held during the fall of 2008, the convention is to call it a fashion week for S/S 2009, the next season, for which they’ll be showing clothes at the shows. [↩]

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