I’ve never been shy about my love for Kpop … yes, I’m a YG stan from way back! Which is why I gleefully watched the latest video from the entertainment company’s girl group BlackPink with eyes wide open to spot the latest Korean fashion trends.
And there, front and center were some fabulous traditional Hanbok-with-a-twist garments. I recognised the fabrics, prints and decorative details from all those Kdramas we all watch, but teamed with boots, short-shorts and minis, this was definitely not something Queen Seondeok would wear!
I was already following a number of other Korean brands that were working with traditional fabrics and clothing shapes on Instagram, but these garments were a cut above with the attention to detailing and how modern they looked. Eventually I tracked down the brand behind the looks and discovered Danha.
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Danha is not only a brand that is focused on creating a modern version of traditional Korean clothing, it is also a sustainable and ethical fashion brand – not something that is common in the Korean fashion industry.
The brand describes itself as “sustainable ethical ‘slow fashion’ rather than ‘fast fashion’ that causes global warming, [and] will contribute to improving the world’s environmental problems”.
Named after the designer Danha, the brand has always been about two things – celebrating traditional garment heritage in Korea, and being environmentally responsible. The brand works with organic and recycled fabrics, upcycles fabric offcuts – it creates gorgeous foldable shopping totes – and using the traditional flat-cut method of Korean garment design, actively reduces fabric waste. Danha also produces limited runs of stock and will create made-to-measure garments.
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The garments are mostly created out of organic cotton, and eco-fabrics made from recycled plastic bottles. Silk and an eco-friendly tweed is also used for some items, and the brand continues to experiment with creating new sustainable fabrics. Their organic cotton complies with GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard), and is grown in a three year process with no chemical fertilizers, plus only natural starch and wax are used during the spinning process.
Like many brands these days, Danha also uses recycled and biodegradable packaging, and is in the process of trialing an upcycled paper shipping box made of recycled materials.
Another part of the brand’s ethos is its ethical production methods, describing its sewists as “free workers who can choose what they want to do”, in a collegiate workshop environment where all the garments are handmade, “working comfortably together, respecting each other”.
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From the customers’ perspective Danha is also remarkably inclusive unlike other Korean fashion brands which historically have had issues with sizing, creating only small sizes and with little consideration of non-tiny shoppers. Danha, on the other hand, is quite inclusive. The brand’s ‘free size’ ranges from Korean sizes 44 to 66 (that’s XS to M on the international size chart), wrap skirts go up to a 35in waist. Garments also come in sizes that are equal to an international L, and the brand will also customise garments to order in any size you like.
Danha’s aesthetic fits neatly into the growing #cottagecore movement of light layers, ruffles, soft voluminous shapes and an ethereal, fairy vibe. Think drifting around in the moonlight waiting for your prince to arrive while simultaneously discovering a herbal cure for cancer, but in Seoul. These are pretty, pretty clothes with a distinctly Asian traditional take.
Should you wear them if you aren’t Korean, or Asian? Yes! If you love the look it doesn’t matter where you come from, just make sure you don’t do something stupid like add ‘yellow face’ makeup or hair. Hands up if you like to go shopping more than four times per year. Wait, maybe it is even more frequently. Shopping is a form of therapy that draws friends closer and alleviates stress levels. But is it as healthy and relaxing as we think it is? Ladies (and maybe gentlemen), we know that sometimes we can get slightly obsessed with it. How many times do you stand in front of a mirror in a shop, holding a blouse in each hand, feeling unsure which one to choose, when in fact all you went to the store to buy was turmeric powder? Been there, done that!
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We all want those gorgeous one-pieces even though we have thirteen hanging in the closet. Heels, too, we want to buy but will never wear because, let’s admit it, there is a high chance that our feet might fall off while wearing them. Fast fashion encourages large retailers like Zara
And H&M to reduce the time between producing and selling clothing to every four to six weeks, and to invest more and more in visual merchandising, to turn us into brainwashed moths flying directly into the flame. How did this trend of fast fashion even emerge?
In 1980, mass-market retailers developed a “quick response” concept based on trends from the catwalk. The main objective was to deliver a designer product to a mass market at a relatively low price in a relatively short time.
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If Fashion Weeks are held four times a year worldwide, then the market-based, quick-response strategy should provide new collections at least 1–2 months later. There are several brands that ride on the wave of fast fashion. I am sure you have heard of or bought from Zara, H&M, Topshop, C&A, and Peacocks. Zara, the Spanish mass-market retailer, is a role model for this continuous seasonal production. Like any other mass-market retailer, Zara’s strategy consists of several crucial aspects: visual merchandising, market timing, cost, and buying cycles. According to research, 75 percent of shopping decisions are made in front of the item in three seconds. This fact proves how successful investments in the visual merchandise of the aforementioned brands are.
How big is the market? Well, the revenue in Korea is expected to be $18.8 million in 2020 alone, with the largest segment being women’s apparel. Growth is expected to increase by 2.8 percent annually. A basic rule of economics states that there might be nothing wrong with fast fashion. The more we produce, the more we consume, the better our living standard. Yes, maybe in some alternative reality, it is a totally harmless philosophy. But in our reality, fast fashion has a long list of negatives that include water pollution, the decay of synthetic fabrics, child labor, and poor working conditions in developing countries. As a result, we witness tragic events such as the collapse of the Savar building, a garment factory in Bangladesh, with a death toll of 1, 134 in 2013. How can we slow this phenomenon
For years. It is, therefore, a good financial decision. Secondly, try to buy products that are eco-friendly. Nowadays a group of Korean designers
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Another brand that is worth attention is RE;CODE the leading sustainable fashion brand in Korea. The RE;CODE slogan is “This Is Not Just Fashion, ” and the brand supports this slogan by using innovative methods like upcycling deadstock for new use.
Another Korean vegan fashion brand is Not Ours, which uses alternative fabrics instead of leather, fur, and silk. The founder of the brand, Park Jin-young, has said, “This is the brand we started because we needed it ourselves.” Not Ours remains one of the few vegan brands in Korea. Last but not least, remember alternatives like secondhand shops and recycled clothing. It will be more environmentally friendly if you donate items of clothing that you no longer wear so that they can be reused. You can always participate in the GIC Freecycle to do just that.
To conclude, it is, of course, a personal choice of individuals whether they want to go out of their comfort zones and explore more eco-friendly ways of shopping. It may be challenging to start, especially when the number of “green” brands in Korea is limited. However, it might be the right time to take the first step towards ethical sustainable fashion. As Anne Lappe once said, “Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.”
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