Seoul Fashion Week

Simon was lucky enough to get press and backstage passes to Seoul Fashion Week. Here’s a short video of what he saw.

Ok, so this was my first Fashion Show ever. Like, ever. I remember watching a couple episodes of Fashion TV back in Canada when I was bored, and I remember thinking how boring those shows must be. I mean, sure, there is artistic merit in fashion, but whatever it is I don’t understand it. At all. I’d like to listen what the critics would say afterwards, how that dress that totally weirded me out was supposedly revolutionary, so on and so forth. So, even though I got to go to Seoul Fashion Week, I wasn’t really looking forward to it.

But I was wrong. In fact, I was really pleasantly surprised. We’ve both always been amazed at how fashionable Korea is, and we both feel like we’re better dressed now in Korea than we’ve ever been before, because of Korea’s awesome sense of fashion. Seriously! When we first came here we’d just go out in tees and baggy jeans. Korea made us feel…frumpy, not by saying anything directly to us or by giving us stink eye or anything rude. Everyone just is so well dressed here and we felt frumpy in comparison, and so we feel like we gotta try to put in a bit more effort. And so, when I went to the show I didn’t think of how weird all of the pieces were as I would have a few years ago watching Fashion TV. I was thinking about how freaking cool it all was and how much I’d want to be able to pull those looks off. Damn. Wish I could fit in it, though! Korean clothes don’t really fit me, as I’ve mentioned a while ago in our video for Korean Custom Tailors.

Jessica of SNSD, Hara of Kara, and GNA of...GNA, at Seoul Fashion Week

Jessica, G.NA, and Hara at Seoul Fashion Week

Anyhow, I got to see some celebrities there. Unfortunately, I’m not really good at recognizing them. Jessica from SNSD was in the Resurrection show. G.NA was the white haired model in Lie sang bong’s show. Funny story about G.NA: I went back stage and I saw her, and was right beside her, but I never thought of taping her or asking her any questions, because I had no clue who she was. Only after the show I was told that it was G.NA. Damn! She had too much makeup on! How was I supposed to recognize her? But it’s probably for the best. I probably would have said something like “Hey Gona. I mean, G.NA. I, err, made a video about your video and said you were scary. Awkward! So…do you…like stuff?” Yeah, that would have been great!

Even more awkward: backstage when G.NA was giving her interview to the weird guy with the massive green bowtie, I was pulled aside by my translator to do an interview with a girl I don’t know. Supposedly she was in a big Kpop band a while ago: S.E.S. I had no clue who she was, because that was before my time. So she’s standing in front of the camera and looking at me and waiting for me to ask my questions…but I had none. Ahh! I felt bad. Is there a Kpop crash course I can take so I can know the people of the past? Awkward!

I was lucky enough to be able to hang out with Michael Hurt of FeetManSeoul. He’s been doing fashion photography for a long time and knows his stuff. He was in that KBS show on Korean Blogs we were in a while ago. Anyhow, I’ve never done anything along these lines, so he was able to tell me about the etiquette, and he was also kind enough to get things sorted out for me when I had some issues with the registration process. My Korean isn’t up to snuff, and his is. So big thanks to him for helping me out, because without him I wouldn’t have been able to make this video.

Another thing: holy crap was everyone tall there! I mean, I’m 6’4, and I’m used to being a giant in Korea. But at Seoul Fashion Week there were large crowds of people who wanted to see the shows, but these weren’t normal people. They were all, from what I could tell, aspiring models. How could I tell? Because they were all tall and skinny, really fashionably dressed, and really freaking good looking. My guess as to why they were there: maybe they were hoping to get discovered? Or maybe models just love watching fashion shows in their spare time? I don’t know. I just remember thinking “why can’t I see the top of your head” and feeling ill at ease. I like being monstrously tall.

Ok, that’s it for now. I only went for two days: Tuesday and Thursday, and so I couldn’t get all of the shows. Still had to make Music Mondays and WTF Wednesdays! So I missed out on other celebs there. Sorry if you’re disappointed! One more thingL Also, I don’t think G.NA is 5’8. She was reallllllly small from where I was looking. Maybe it was in contrast to all the monster tall models around me. I don’t know. Also, some people have been asking for the music we make in our videos, so here’s the track for this video, if you’re interested. Martina made this one. It’s called, “Seoul Fashion Week.” Creative title, no?

Seoul Fashion Week by simonandmartina