MA Fashion Design Technology (Womenswear)
Transient: garment = wrapping cloth In the course of creating the graduating collection entitled âtransient: garment=wrapping cloth,â Min Jeong Ko directed her research towards the concept of belonging and thus investigated her personal and cultural identity as a Korean-born American fashion designer studying in the United Kingdom. She was able to develop her own contemporary vision of traditional Korean items and then reproduce them for the modern context. The designer reanalyzed the Korean traditional hanbok costume and Korean traditional bojagi wrapping cloths in a modern contemporary way using neoprene as a hidden padding covered with jersey, and pattern cutting techniques of two-dimensions becoming three dimensions. Related to her personal experience of coming from Korea to the United States and then to the United Kingdom, the idea of modern-day nomads was illustrated through experimental pattern cutting techniques which used two of the same two-dimensional shapes which are then sewn together and bagged out. This was similar to and inspired by the construction of making bags in the traditional way of the Korean bojagi wrapping cloth. After completing the designing and production of ten different looks from one collection, not only did the designer understand and improve her technical skills such as tailoring, draping, and pattern-cutting, but she also developed herself as an individual and as a designer who experienced working within the garment industry in order to order fabrics from Premiere Vision and produce garments with improved communication skills. Also, it came to a point where the designer was not afraid of pattern cutting and draping anymore because she realized that if there is at least one hole on any two dimensional surface, the two-dimensional shape can turn into a garment in three dimensions, which allowed her to reflect on ancient times when people merely put on a piece of cloth to cover their bodies. Min Jeong Ko mink220@gmail.com Photography: Doh Lee Make-up & Hair: Suhyun Kang
