A Seoul (서울특별시) exploration inside the Sinchon (신촌역), Hongdae (홍대) and Myeongdong (명동) neighborhoods findings signs of social changes and how definitions of gender and the modes of its performance are shifting along the South Korean globalization process.
“By repurposing the concept “cultural landscape”, I propose a new direction, one partially (and minimally) explored by the century-old practice of street and the much younger genre of street fashion photography, in which physical landscapes are affected by their human geographies in a direct way, whether commercially through consumption (“ladification” in Seoul), governmentally through zoning or other kinds of use restrictions, or traditional/customary patterns in land/building usage or cultural practices within certain spaces.”
Dr. Michael W. Hurt deconstructingkorea.squarespace.com
“Fashion that can be defined initially as the social systemic production, consumption and institutionalization of novelty is a cultural phenomenon that integrates culture, the individual and the economy. Fashion is both an idea and an ideal.
In general, fashion is fundamental to culture because it offers aesthetic forms in fields such as dress and clothing, philosophy and religion, music, habits and customs, through which individuals attach to, or demonstrate their difference from, various communities.
As a cultural process, fashion is responsible for locating individuals within a constantly changing forest of objects, people, events, styles and practices to which they relate, about which they form opinions and which symbolically help to locate them within various social strata and communities. In this way, being 'in fashion', indifferent to it or actively claiming to reject fashion becomes an important technique for individuals to establish their social difference and individuality.”
