On "Fashion Sociology"

What is "Fashion Sociology"?

I have written elsewhere about how fashion is sociology-in-motion, is a sartorial text worn and displayed on the body, is more than just consumption, but is a social conversation that is even possessed of a discernible grammar. In any case, it is certainly indicative of social change, and especially in Korea's case, a marker of how definitions of gender and the modes of its performance are shifting, how basic social norms are metamorphasizing faster than many people can make sense of. And it is through street fashion photography -- the visual medium -- that one can track the actual markers of these changes in a concrete, presentable way, as raw visual data. 

Describing "Urban Landscapes"

The first "open-source ethnography project," the Cultural Geography of Seoul" project is a large, ethnographic research project that maps the city of Seoul across two axes -- one geographic and the other cultural. Whether it be describing the cultural landscapes of discrete neighborhoods such as Shinchon, Hongdae, or Myeongdong, our empirical data gathered as audio interviews, photographs, and other forms of media will be presented shared in combined form through new media tools such as Soundcloud, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr, creating a searchable and shareable database of data that is transparently and democratically accessible to outside academic investigators as an invaluable store of ethnographic data to allow dots to be connected and patterns made visible in the complex matrix of South Korean society. 

Shinchon, August 2007.
IMG_1001
 

Methodology

ethnographic interviews, photographic portraits

Key equipment

any cellphone camera, any sound recording app

Aesthetic deployments

bringing the studio to the street, the street to thestudio 

“A cultural landscape, as defined by the World Heritage Committee, is the "cultural properties [that] represent the combined works of nature and of man."..."a landscape designed and created intentionally by man"

an "organically evolved landscape" which may be a "relict (or fossil) landscape" or a "continuing landscape"

an "associative cultural landscape" which may be valued because of the "religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural element."”

 

 

 

Seoul Fashion Week DDP Culture Mapping:

1. Q: Where are you from? A: Yang tai, Shang dong, China. 2. Q: How long have you stay in Korea? A: Since 2009, when I was 18 years old. 3. Q: Since 2009! That is a long time! So what are you doing now? A: I am doing some design now. Since 2009, I studied Korean in language school and then finished my undergraduate courses here. After graduating from the university, I went back to China and stay in China for 7 months. After that, I came back to Korea again. 4. Q: Do you regard yourself as a paepi? A: I think I am fashion people, but I am not Korean style. Q: So, what kind style of you? A: Kind tend to Japanese style, cause I like the Japanese HARAJUKU （原宿 はらじゅく）style. Q: When did you shape your own taste for this kind fashion? A: I'm not sure. It is a nature procedure. 5. Q: So, is there any relationship between the things you designed and what you dressed? A: Yes, I am clothes designer. When I graduate, I started the fur coat design. My family is doing fur business. Q: So, what you wear today is your own design? A: Yes, but it is not very environmental friendly. Q: Real fur? Include the shoes? A: Yes. Q: Since your family is doing the fur business, are you one of the designers of your family company? A: I was. But now I am independent to do my studio. Q: (Wow, that's so awesome!!!) 6. Q: How many times have you been to the SWF? A: I always be here since the SWF just stated a few years ago. Q: Have you been to any other fashion week? A: Not yet. Q: How do you feel about SWF? A: I think the situation in Korea is very obvious which people pay more attention to the “people” instead of “fashion”. Q: Yeah. That's true. People are crazy for the famous people here. Whenever you use camera focused on someone, many people will crowd around you to shoot for that person. A: That's it. The reason that they take photo for someone may not because of his dressing. 7. Q: Besides the Japanese HARAJUKU style, any other elements give you inspirations for your own design? A: Illumination and furniture design. I often go to the market for home decoration. For example, some subjects like door handles and something else. Q: Wow, it's interesting that door handle can be connected with the clothes design. A: Yeah. You can get a lot of inspiration from other areas instead of being limited on clothes design itself. 8. Q: Where do you spend you time? A: My own studio, in front of the sewing machine (haha)……. 9. Q: Do you have any favorite designer? A: I like KYE ( Kathleen Kye). I think she is my favorite korean designer. Q: Why she attracts you? A: Her design is bold and very unique. Something like the US hip-hop, not korean style. For me, it is awesome. And she also graduated from London Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, which also affects her style.

an interview in Seoul Fashion Week

 

Words to Shoot By:

Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good.


– Garry Winogrand




When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.


– Robert Frank