Category: Arts & Culture

Bringing together a wealth of primary sources and with contributions from leading experts, Dress History of Korea presents the most recent approaches to the interpretation of dress and fashion of Korea. Through close analysis of visual, written, and material sources—some newly excavated or recently re-discovered in global museums—the book reveals how dress and adornment evolved from the period of state formation to the modern era. As in other cultures, modern Korean

Bringing together a wealth of primary sources and with contributions from leading experts, Dress History of Korea presents the most recent approaches to the interpretation of dress and fashion of Korea. Through close analysis of visual, written, and material sources—some newly excavated or recently re-discovered in global museums—the book reveals how dress and adornment evolved from the period of state formation to the modern era.

As in other cultures, modern Korean fashion owes many of its styles to historic dress and this process of adaptation is explored within high fashion and popular culture contexts in ways that benefit historians, curators, and designers alike.

Authors with a range of academic and curatorial experience discuss the close relation of dress and adornments to the socio-political and cultural history of Korea and place the dress history of Korea within broader contexts in studies of fashion, material culture, museology, and costume design.

Join us for a conversation with Minjee Kim and Kyunghee Pyun, the editors of this anthology.

This program will be released as a video on Friday, March 24.

Dress History of Korea
with Minjee Kim & Kyunghee Pyun

Thursday, July 13, 2023 | 6 PM (EDT)

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Speakers:

Minjee Kim is a historian specializing in dress, fashion, and textiles of Korea and Research Associate of Tracing Patterns Foundation based in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA.

Kyunghee Pyun is Associate Professor in the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, USA.

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K-pop, K-fashion, K-drama, K-beauty: over the past decade, K-style has exploded onto the global scene. What is behind this phenomenon? Where does K-style go from here? In Make, Break, Remix: The Rise of K-style, author and communications consultant Fiona Bae makes no attempt to define or categorize the movement, instead celebrating the eclectic and multifaceted nature of K-style and its home city of Seoul.

Photo by less_TAEKYUN KIM

K-pop, K-fashion, K-drama, K-beauty: over the past decade, K-style has exploded onto the global scene. What is behind this phenomenon? Where does K-style go from here?

In Make, Break, Remix: The Rise of K-style, author and communications consultant Fiona Bae makes no attempt to define or categorize the movement, instead celebrating the eclectic and multifaceted nature of K-style and its home city of Seoul. Through interviews with sixteen tastemakers who are shaping K-style across creative sectors—from 1MILLION Dance Studio’s Lia Kim, rock band leader Hwang Soyoon, and world-famous tattoo artist Doy to drag performer Nana Youngrong Kim, Asia’s leading interior designer Teo Yang, and leading K-pop stylist Youngjin Kim (who has styled BTS, Kang Daniel, and NCT)—Bae tells untold stories from true insiders, exploring a sense of identity in their work, how living in Seoul affects them and their creative output, and the decade of changes that has brought about the current K-style.

In her conversation with Frances Cha, Bae discusses the rise of K-style.

Make, Break, Remix: The Rise of K-style will be available for sale during the event.

Make Break Remix: The Rise of K-style
with Fiona Bae

Thursday, May 25, 2023 | 6:30 PM (EDT)

 

 

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Speaker:

Fiona Bae is the author of the internationally acclaimed book Make Break Remix: The Rise of K-style published by Thames & Hudson. Born and raised in Korea, she is proud of her heritage and passionate about promoting her country and culture. Following graduation from Yonsei University in Seoul, she has lived around the world, including stints at the UN in New York and four years in Hong Kong, and now resides in London.

Fiona has her own consultancy that looks to bridge Korean culture and the rest of the world by promoting Korean artists, designers and architects internationally. She leads communications for Frieze Seoul, represented the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and worked with museum M+ in Hong Kong. Stories about how her clients are transforming Seoul’s urban life and its design and art scenes have appeared in the Financial Times, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, The Economist, Le Figaro, Monocle Magazine and Wallpaper*.

About the Moderator:

Frances Cha is the author of the novel If I Had Your Face (Ballantine, 2020), which was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Time Magazine, NPR and BBC among other publications, and is being translated into 11 languages. She is from Korea and worked as a culture editor for CNN in Seoul and Hong Kong. She has taught creative writing at Yonsei University and media studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and currently teaches undergraduate fiction workshop at Columbia University. Her children’s book The Goblin Twins, set in Korea and New York, is forthcoming from Crown in September, 2023.

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Seoul, South Korea makes Beverly Hills look like a one-stoplight town when it comes to the beauty rat race, and it’s getting more intense every year. Elise Hu spent four years in South Korea as NPR’s bureau chief, and during her tenure there, the K-beauty industry tripled to become a $10 billion industry. South Korea is home to more than 7,500 cosmetic and skincare manufacturers, and K-beauty has staked its claim as the future of skin care.

Author photo by Emily Cummings

Seoul, South Korea makes Beverly Hills look like a one-stoplight town when it comes to the beauty rat race, and it’s getting more intense every year. Elise Hu spent four years in South Korea as NPR’s bureau chief, and during her tenure there, the K-beauty industry tripled to become a $10 billion industry. South Korea is home to more than 7,500 cosmetic and skincare manufacturers, and K-beauty has staked its claim as the future of skin care.

With products that promise pore-less perfection, South Korea’s $10 billion beauty industry is a decade ahead of any other country in innovation and heralded by many industry professionals as the best when it comes to products, regimen, and end-results. Riding the pop culture “Korean wave” and marketed by K-pop superstars and global brands, K-beauty promises flawless skin and a soothing multi-step routine. You’ll find K-beauty products in any city around the world, and in the US, the biggest importer of K-beauty behind China, you can take your pick from hundreds of brands at stores from Nordstrom and Bloomingdales to Sephora and Target. But how did K-Beauty become the darling of the global skincare industry? And does the trend stop at creams and toners? Or are we in an appearance revolution that will permanently transform our faces and bodies towards a more aesthetically pleasing sameness?

Elise Hu, NPR host-at-large and the host of TED Talks Daily, asked herself those questions after living and working in Seoul, the heart of the K-beauty industry. She delivers an audacious, journalistic exposé of the booming industry from the ground up in Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital. In the book, Hu explores K-beauty’s undeniable success and shines a much-needed light on the darker ramifications of the impossible standards and pressures that drive its growth and their effects on women in a looks-obsessed patriarchy.

In a conversation with Hannah Bae, Elise Hu discusses her book and her experience in Korea.

Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital will be available for sale during the event via Yu & Me Books.

 

FLAWLESS: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital
with Elise Hu

Tuesday, May 23, 2023 | 6:30 PM (EDT)

 

 

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Speaker:

Elise Hu is a correspondent and host-at-large for NPR, the American news network, and since April 2020, the inaugural host of TED Talks Daily, the daily podcast from TED that’s downloaded a million times a day in all countries of the world. For nearly four years, she was the NPR bureau chief responsible for coverage of North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. Her work has earned the national DuPont Columbia, Edward R. Murrow, and Gracie awards, along with a Gannett Foundation Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism. She lives in Los Angeles with her three daughters.

About the Moderator:

by Arin Sang-urai @photojuice

Hannah Bae is a Korean American freelance journalist, nonfiction writer and illustrator who is at work on a memoir about family estrangement and mental illness. She is the 2020 nonfiction winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a 2021 and 2022 Peter Taylor Fellow for The Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. You can find her work in anthologies such as Our Red Book: Intimate Histories of Periods, Growing & Changing and (Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation About Mental Health and online at Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, Catapult, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets.

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