Valerie Lee - my sartorial autobiography

My early fashion choices were mostly made by two people - my aunt who studied textile design in Philadelphia and my mother who is a self-called college fashionista.
I remember when my aunt came back for vacation to Korea during her college years, she gave me clothes from Benetton, and GAP. "You can just tell it's from U.S.! " Every family members would say something like that, as a way of showing their gratitude and appreciation. But it was not just a way of saying thank you, but also a statement of a fact. At least it seemed so to me.

My aunt always smelled so elegant, fresh and was so stylish. I was not old enough to know what fashion was in the most common sense, but always felt that my aunt was more refined and "cultured" than other family members who had not lived abroad. Even the simplest thing - a stripped button down shirts and jeans she put on seemed somehow better than the others.
The yellow trench coat from Benetton was also something that I loved to wear. I felt more elegant than my peers. It was something about the fact that it came from abroad that gave me the confidence.

When I went to Canada, however, I realized the clothes that I bought from Korea was also something that can be admired by my foreign (Canadian) friends. Two particular items that I remember were a round neck long sleeve shirt that had very intricate print on with warm tone of coral pink which was unusual to come by and a black zip up hoodie that had rainbow bands that accentuated the linings of the hoodie. Both items were from Banila-B, a fashion brand that many girls of my age and above coveted. So since before I went to Canada, those items were my favorite causal items. When my Canadian friends started to admire those two items, they became my special occasion clothes. And from then, I started to appreciate Korean clothes better.

While I came to appreciate Korean brand clothes, I did not feel as comfortable in my Korean clothing as I did in my yellow rain proof jacket that wrote "CANADA" in black on the front. When I wore that with jeans, I just felt just the same with rest of the crowd. I also started to envy girls who could pull off the v-necks; at the time, I couldn't really wear v-necks without wearing anything underneath because I did not have any cleavage to show off. I thought to myself Koreans must like something detailed and flashy more than simple outfits such as jeans with v-necks because we have less curves. However, this theory that I made was something value-neutral - I wasn't ashamed that we were less curvy; I just thought there were two different ways to dress and be fashionable.

Another transitory moment in my fashion life came after I got accepted to NYU. Wanting to be the "Newyorker" that people already started to identified me as, I started to pay more attention to fashion. When I searched for New York Fashion on the most popular Korean search engine(that was a mistake, looking back), many internet clothing shopping malls came up.
When I logged into the websites, pictures of the products were adjacent to, or were overlapped with pictures of celebrities who were casually walking on streets, wearing something that was similar or identical to the image of actual product sold on the website. I bought multiple items from such website, such as my distressed light blue jeans, my grey/pink stripped cape sweater and a double breasted jacket with a clock brouche on.

When I went to New York, I realized my dress was a little bit off. I concluded that I lacked many black items or just dark neutrals in general. The black wrap up sweater and black leather jacket from Armani Exchange were the first clothes that I purchased in the city. The black sweater not only was in black, but was a wrap up sweater, which was unfamiliar to me but many people on the streets seemed to wear on a daily basis.

Some of my friends find that my interest in "looking like the people on the streets" (utility boots, parka, dark neutrals..etc) contradicts my confidence in Korean culture. Their questions are not surprising to me, given the fact that I love to let people know about my country. Since I was in Canada, I thought of myself as a citizen diplomat; I am among the privileged group of Koreans and it is a responsibility of mine to draw attention to Korea, which is still relatively unknown apart from the issues related to North Korea and wars.

Dressing up more like a "typcial newyorker" is an essential factor which helps me to approach wider range and larger number of the local foreign area that I was living it. As Franz Fanon, a representative thinker on the issue of decolonization and psychopathology of conlonization wrote in his book "The Wretched of the Earth", the first thing people see of one another is each other's color (race). Although deny that his judgment on another being is influenced by skin color, and tries not to let that factor influence his mind, I still think the skin color inevitably influences one's first impression on another. The clothes that one is wearing would be the next to the skin color, since clothing is a "second skin", meaning it is closest to the physical body itself. When I dress up as a "New Yorker", I present myself as someone who is fully capable of appreciating, and assimilated to the local culture. Once I give off such impression to others I meet in New York, they would not think I am proud of Korea just because I am biased, narrow minded patriot of her mother country. But when I dress up in a Fobby way, (FOB is a acronym of Fresh Out of Boat, referring to foreigners who just arrived in the local area), people are more likely to think of me as a naive, narrow minded person.

That is why I came to mix and match the items that I brought from Korea with the dark neutrals that I purchased in New York. In the picture below, I am wearing my pink/grey cape that I got from Korean internet shopping mall with the clothes I bought in the City.





Another transitory moment came with the fashion approaches class that I took in the second semester of my sophomore year. Reading Walter Benjamin and watching film about Bill Cunningham, I realized there is a deep relationship between my inner desires and the clothes I choose to purchase and wear and that putting on clothes can be like "writing a poem with clothes". For example, I was able to explain my obsession with a brand "Freepeople" right before the start of my second semester. I spent the summer vacation (before my second semester started) in a small liberal arts college in Vermont called Middlebury. There, I wore skinny jeans and t-shirts - the summer casuals that I wore in Seoul or in New York. During the time I spent in middlebury, I regretted so much I didn't have any sundresses or clothes that would respond to the lovely gentle winds of Vermont. Freepeople's store atmosphere and the catalogogue picture conveyed the life style that is close to that in Middlebudy - free and close to nature.

The t-shirt dress that I'm wearing in the picture below is from Freepeople. Although it is not the exact type of sundress that would respond to the winds of middlebury, I purchased it because the asymmetric cut of the dress made me look like a green leaf. There certainly are not enough greens in the area I live in, and if I could be a leaf itself in a city like this, it would be the best way to feel close to nature.