tales from Korea

You’ll be spoilt for choice when shopping in Korea, that is, as long as your size is pretty small and you have a similar build to a Korean. For men, I think it may be a little easier as some Korean men can be pretty big – comparable to a normal western man. But for everyone else, having a slightly oversized romp, being extra tall or having a wide chest can mean giving up on high street shopping and going instead for some specialist shopping in Itaewon.

I’m 178cm, pretty normal, I’m not a very big guy, but have quite wide shoulders and a wide chest – I am XL everywhere in Korea, and at that the XL barely fits. By the way, they don’t really have the American style XXL XXXL type sizes in Korean stores – XL is the biggest. For top sizes, I look for the Korean “105″ which is generally the biggest size, and it fits me just about. Pants, jeans ect are a little easier, you can get them pretty easily up to 36″ waist – but most of them have a fixed length (Or they just say ‘normal’ or ‘longer’). If you’re a rather tall fellow – you’ll probably have to head off to Itaewon. I know quite a few westerners who don’t really get any clothes in Korea, they have to haul it all from their home country.

When I go shopping for clothes, I have a quick checklist which goes from the most important (Practicality) to the least important (Style). Pretty much everything I buy has to fulfil these criteria, but if one point weights heavily above the point below it, I may still get it. For example, if something was really damn comfortable, even if it was expensive, I’d probably get it. This may all sound a bit pretentious or something, but really it’s just my priority when buying clothes. Like most men, I couldn’t care, but I still have the inbuilt strict money sense from being a student for so long. Here’s the list:

• Practicality
• An item should have a purpose and be build well for that purpose, it should be practical and useful.
• Comfort
• It should be comfortable to wear and not cause any pain even with extended use*.
• Cost
• It should be reasonably priced – Build quality and materials equal to a fair price**.
• Style
• It should look good, and not just be made for a current fashion trend but be good for a while.

* This is why high heels fail the test (Obviously for girls!).
** Most designer labels you’re paying for the brand over the quality of the product hence that’s why i don’t buy any.

Yeah, you all know how anal I am.

The three shops I’m going to recommend which provide what I need with those requirements are Giordano, UNIQLO and Basic House. By the way, I’m not being sponsored, this is just my opinion.

Giordano is great for casual clothing, I like their simple but attractive styles. Their jumpers are neat: Round necks and hoodies, in a variety of colours so you can easily match to taste. They have some really high quality shirts too; a little pricey mind, but they’re really nice. I do wear some of the shirts for school, and none have ever shrunk in the wash. I’ve never bought any pants here, but I did buy a very nice long jacket that was on sale (-40%) because it was last seasons fashion.

UNIQLO is one of all my all round favourite shops – It’s actually a Japanese company. Check out their pants and jeans – they usually have some formal ones good for school and some casual ones good for outside school. They regularly run sale events and you can usually pick up a genuine bargain there. I’ve bought jumpers for school, great underwear, Thermal pants, Jeans and other things there. Very good prices for the quality, I’ve generally found. There is a huge UNIQLO in the 명동 (Myeongdong) shopping area.

Basic House is another good all rounder. They have a lot of clothes that are good for school wearing – cotton pants, ‘teacher’ style jumpers and a lot of decent shirts. I’ve found the quality to be a bit hit and miss, but it’s still a shop worth checking out. Prices are a bit odd too – Some things are very well priced while others seem arbitrarily high. Sometimes they have very fashionable clothes in one section and in the other they have very basic and generic universal styles.

There are a few other places worth checking out, but these three seem to be the best for western male teachers buying clothes in Korea, in my opinion.

The first time at having a chance to visit a large comic convention came up today and I couldn’t resist jumping at the opportunity to head over and check it out. It was well worth going to; many people showed up in magnificent costumes and the convention itself, whilst being amateur, had a whole lot of talented artists displaying their goods. I would of liked to support the comic creators but of course the comics are in Korean.

Here is a selection of photographs from the convention:

The Korean female figure is elegant. Woman in Korea have been described by some as the most beautiful in Asia. I can see the appeal, but I can’t really relate to most of them as some other men do. This is not painting all Korean women with the same brush, not by any means. My problem is the type of woman JaYeon and I have resorting to naming simply “Posh girls”. They may not even be that rich, but they’ll do whatever it takes to fit in with the norm of fashion and style. Koreans love being fashionable, they have embraced branding and trends more than any other country I’ve been too. As they’ve taken the American economic model, I guess this was going to happen, but maybe even more of an extent thanks to Korean mentality. This acute awareness of fashion and trends, to me, just makes everyone look pretty much the same. You can see when something becomes popular, and suddenly everyone from the kool kids to the elegant female office worker is right on it. The posh girls in particular, wear high heels as regular shoes and take around compact and ludicrously expensive Prada/Gucci bags. But high heels are the ‘thing’ – they use them to do everything. Since coming to Korea, I’ve already seen three high heel related accidents:

1. An attractive looking posh lady walking down the stairs in Dunkin Donuts, her heel doesn’t land properly on the step – her foot slides to the left and she falls head first down the last 5 hard steps. I offered to help her up but she stumbled off in embarrassment. I guess not that posh anymore.
2. A woman gets her heel stuck in a sidewalk drain grate. It’s well jammed – she pulls so hard the shoe breaks – her expensive heel is now swimming in gunk 15 meters below the service. Not so posh anymore.
3. A woman is on a walking trail, on a mountain, in heels. Yes, idiotic. Even more so then the usual posh heel wearer. She tries to climb over some rocks and falls in a heap. Not so posh anymore I think.

Maybe it’s the lack of individualisation and customisation that we’re use to in the west that bothers me so much. In Korean Confucianistic mentality, they all must “fit in”, and this is the way for people to show off how successful they are by being able to afford expensive clothes as well as being ‘with it’ – knowing the fashion. Some women spend an entire months pay, or more, to get a new handbag from Gucci or a new set of heels from whomever else. The fact that most single people stay with their parents until they get married means they have more of a disposable income to spend on fashion. I don’t want to sound overly critical; there are many Korean women who do like to bend the norms – usually the teen generation. There are particular styles from Japan that have caught on, and in the future it’s likely more subcultures will develop as Korea becomes more multicultural. I like many clothes on offer too, but I work on a different style of priorities, with purpose and comfort coming before style. I just wish the high heel wearers would think about that occasionally, particularly when hiking in the mountains.