Mission
About
Archive
Submit
Newsletter
PAST ISSUES:
16. Transformative Fashion Pedagogies
15. Southeast Asia
14. Barbie
13. Fashion & Politics
12. Border Garments
11. Digital Engagement
10. Partnership
9. Fall 2021
8. Mental Health
7. Motherhood
6. Fall 2020
5. The Industry
4. Summer 2017
3. Spring 2017
2. Winter 2016
1. Fall 2016
Muyo Park, who trained as a fashion designer, is now a PhD student in the Department of Media Communication and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Leveraging his background in fashion education and industry, he currently researches the colonial structures of UK fashion schools, with a particular focus on ‘international’ students, whose identities and diasporas are often exploited under the guise of creativity. He is also an associate of Fashion Academics Creating Equality (FACE) and contributes writings to ceimou, an independent designer brand based in Seoul, South Korea.
South Korea has used either the Korean pronunciation of the English word “shirts” or the term “waishatsu” to refer to dress shirts. The etymology of “waishatsu” is generally believed to stem from the Japanese-English pronunciation of “white shirt.” [1] The word “waishatsu” embodies a colonial hierarchy, as it represents the transplantation of Western dress culture in Korea under Japanese rule (1910-1945). The fact that it is still used in everyday life in the 21st century reminds me of what Elizabeth Wilson has identified as fashion’s paradox: fashion has been dismissed as superficial and philistine, yet it has exposed contradiction and hypocrisy. [2] Walter Benjamin had already noted this paradoxical aspect of fashion. For him, it served as a dialectical tool to deconstruct the myth of progress. This is because he discovered that fashion’s anachronistic potential disrupts linear historical progress. [3] In this temporal framework, fashion experiences an eternal recurrence of losing its aura and becoming outdated upon market appearance. Benjamin sought “motifs of redemption” in this temporality created by commodity fetishism within capitalism. [4] When applied to the case of “waishatsu,” this transcends the linear conception of time that seems to extend from the end of Japanese colonial rule to current South Korean society, disrupting the myth of progress and once again bringing back the forgotten history.
At the same time, it cannot be denied that “waishatsu” represents a case where colonialism is materialised through dress commodities, as this term unconsciously reproduces the colonizers’ language. Fashion, therefore, as a “reified, fetishised commodity and class ideology,” [5] conceals historical contexts, such as production conditions, through commodity enchantment. This phantasmagoria deceives and distorts fashion’s own revolutionary potential. The fashion of Benjamin’s modernity is of course different from that of today. His critique, however, remains valid in today’s fashion system wherein mass trends have been replaced by hyper-individualized micro-trends, and immediate consumption and fleeting illusions seem to have been further reinforced. Fashion contains a dialectical leap between repetition and novelty, transience and eternity. This tension holds the potential of history, “filled by the presence of the now [Jetztzeit].” [6] However, this revolutionary potential is structurally silenced in today’s fashion system. The revolutionary impulse has been reduced to a superficial obsession with mystery and spectacle. Its ever-changing essence has been diminished to a faithful agent of capitalism, delaying and nullifying the opportunity to explode the continuum of history.
Nevertheless, antithetical movements against fashion’s self-concealment are emerging. By juxtaposing fashion’s surface allure with its unconscious—the histories, labor, and origins it has overlooked or repressed—these movements attempt to overcome the limitations of that earlier avant-garde. From Benjamin’s perspective, these can be seen as pursuing fashion as a dialectical image. They deconstruct the auratic and mystified character of high fashion. By revealing its material, historical, and social composition, they aim to awaken their practitioners and audience from fashion’s illusion. However, critical fashion, which foregrounds a clear message as an antithesis to fashion, may be weakening its appeal to the masses by distancing itself from fashion. The problem with critical fashion is not whether fashion can be free from fetishism to perform its role as a critic. Rather, the issue lies in fashion's self-erasure of its own dynamics of fascination and desire through attempts to reject and escape fetishism for the sake of critique. This means that fashion abandons its own contradictory, revolutionary potential. It loses the possibility of interpreting the dialectical image of the current crisis through fashion itself. For fashion to create dialectical images, where past and present collide, it must maintain the very contradiction that critical fashion seeks to escape. Purging fetishism and desire means forfeiting the capture of repressed historical possibilities and bringing them into the present, what Benjamin noted as the “tiger leap.”
At the same time, it cannot be denied that “waishatsu” represents a case where colonialism is materialised through dress commodities, as this term unconsciously reproduces the colonizers’ language. Fashion, therefore, as a “reified, fetishised commodity and class ideology,” [5] conceals historical contexts, such as production conditions, through commodity enchantment. This phantasmagoria deceives and distorts fashion’s own revolutionary potential. The fashion of Benjamin’s modernity is of course different from that of today. His critique, however, remains valid in today’s fashion system wherein mass trends have been replaced by hyper-individualized micro-trends, and immediate consumption and fleeting illusions seem to have been further reinforced. Fashion contains a dialectical leap between repetition and novelty, transience and eternity. This tension holds the potential of history, “filled by the presence of the now [Jetztzeit].” [6] However, this revolutionary potential is structurally silenced in today’s fashion system. The revolutionary impulse has been reduced to a superficial obsession with mystery and spectacle. Its ever-changing essence has been diminished to a faithful agent of capitalism, delaying and nullifying the opportunity to explode the continuum of history.
Nevertheless, antithetical movements against fashion’s self-concealment are emerging. By juxtaposing fashion’s surface allure with its unconscious—the histories, labor, and origins it has overlooked or repressed—these movements attempt to overcome the limitations of that earlier avant-garde. From Benjamin’s perspective, these can be seen as pursuing fashion as a dialectical image. They deconstruct the auratic and mystified character of high fashion. By revealing its material, historical, and social composition, they aim to awaken their practitioners and audience from fashion’s illusion. However, critical fashion, which foregrounds a clear message as an antithesis to fashion, may be weakening its appeal to the masses by distancing itself from fashion. The problem with critical fashion is not whether fashion can be free from fetishism to perform its role as a critic. Rather, the issue lies in fashion's self-erasure of its own dynamics of fascination and desire through attempts to reject and escape fetishism for the sake of critique. This means that fashion abandons its own contradictory, revolutionary potential. It loses the possibility of interpreting the dialectical image of the current crisis through fashion itself. For fashion to create dialectical images, where past and present collide, it must maintain the very contradiction that critical fashion seeks to escape. Purging fetishism and desire means forfeiting the capture of repressed historical possibilities and bringing them into the present, what Benjamin noted as the “tiger leap.”
Figure 1. Initial sketch for “White Shirts,” 2024. Pen on paper, 21 x 29.7 cm. Image by the author and Yun Jeong.Fashion's failure to achieve Benjaminian reading is not solely due to capitalism's logic and commodity fetishism's illusions. Equally important is its antithesis's abandonment of fashion's distinctive capacity to captivate popular interest, as meaning becomes limited by particular discourses and interpretations. It has consequently positioned itself as a product of institutionalised academia or criticism instead of reflecting upon its own self-contradictions. In short, discussions valid only within expert circles inevitably degenerate into internal echoes appealing solely to 'our' community. In this context, attempts to define ‘critical fashion’ as the designated alternative to capital-F Fashion are problematic; they stand outside the “ruin,” in Benjamin’s terms, to point at it, thereby dissolving the dialectical tension. We must uncover value as an allegory, as an historic relic that reveals the temporal passage and the semantic transformation, from within the very points we seek to criticize. [7]
My argument so far is, in fact, an autoethnographic reflection on my practice-based research with my work “White Shirts.” The work originated from questioning the Korean practice of calling dress shirts “waishatsu.” The work goes beyond pointing out the etymological error—calling all dress shirts "white shirts"—and attempts to recall the historical layers underlying this term's establishment. “White Shirts” sought to reflect upon the violence inherent in the specific manner of borrowing and transforming foreign language in dress culture, embedded in 21st-century Korean society. It particularly focused on the cultural subordination that continues to this day through unconscious, internalized colonial legacies, as foreign languages have been normalized.
The work approaches this in two ways. First, it raises immediate questions through the mismatch between names and actual colors (see fig. 1), prompting reflection on the norms and historical background of Korean dress customs that have universally termed all dress shirts "white." This evoked the colonial linguistic discipline, force, and power that operated beyond mere nomenclatural error in the process whereby this term acquired universality. Second, the sleeve pattern was intentionally altered to form a Y shape. When the arms are down, this design causes a specific part of the sleeve to drape unnaturally (see fig. 2), creating a sense of awkwardness for the wearer. The construction lines and volume are deliberately distorted to induce a feeling of dissonance. Conversely, when the sleeves are lifted and the arms are spread in a Y shape, the drape settles into a stable, intended silhouette (see fig. 3). This enabled spectators to experience how colonial power invisibly and insidiously reached individual bodily sensations, postures, and unconscious linguistic customs through clothing.
My argument so far is, in fact, an autoethnographic reflection on my practice-based research with my work “White Shirts.” The work originated from questioning the Korean practice of calling dress shirts “waishatsu.” The work goes beyond pointing out the etymological error—calling all dress shirts "white shirts"—and attempts to recall the historical layers underlying this term's establishment. “White Shirts” sought to reflect upon the violence inherent in the specific manner of borrowing and transforming foreign language in dress culture, embedded in 21st-century Korean society. It particularly focused on the cultural subordination that continues to this day through unconscious, internalized colonial legacies, as foreign languages have been normalized.
The work approaches this in two ways. First, it raises immediate questions through the mismatch between names and actual colors (see fig. 1), prompting reflection on the norms and historical background of Korean dress customs that have universally termed all dress shirts "white." This evoked the colonial linguistic discipline, force, and power that operated beyond mere nomenclatural error in the process whereby this term acquired universality. Second, the sleeve pattern was intentionally altered to form a Y shape. When the arms are down, this design causes a specific part of the sleeve to drape unnaturally (see fig. 2), creating a sense of awkwardness for the wearer. The construction lines and volume are deliberately distorted to induce a feeling of dissonance. Conversely, when the sleeves are lifted and the arms are spread in a Y shape, the drape settles into a stable, intended silhouette (see fig. 3). This enabled spectators to experience how colonial power invisibly and insidiously reached individual bodily sensations, postures, and unconscious linguistic customs through clothing.
Figure 2. Detail of “White Shirts,” commissioned by Ana Mendes for “Salmon Pantone Collection,” 2019-ongoing. Silk. Photograph by the author.
“It is the wearer’s embodied relationship with the garment that stands as fashion’s last materialist bulwark against its own phantasmagoria.”
However, I came to realize that my design intention, such as the color and pattern cutting, embedded in the work “White Shirts” carried another form of violence. Because its critical message was overly clear and didactic, there was a risk of it becoming an object of dogmatic and contemplative understanding. This was particularly problematic given the conflict of interest inherent in my desire for the artwork to be both exhibited in a gallery while remaining within fashion's boundaries, a conflict that foreclosed the possibility of it being worn. My fixed message of "bringing the past into the present" constrained the possibility of new history and meaning through the wearer's present experience.
Figure 3. “White Shirts” held by the author, commissioned by Ana Mendes for “Salmon Pantone Collection,” 2019-ongoing, mixed media (silk, rods, hangers, second-hand ties), variable dimensions. Photograph by Yun Jeong.
It is the wearer’s embodied relationship with the garment that stands as fashion’s last materialist bulwark against its own phantasmagoria. The concrete specificity of the garment—its texture, weight, and form, but also the entire process of wearing it, moving in it, and interacting with it in a living space—is the very foundation of an experience that can coexist with fashion’s dazzling spectacle while critically reading it. To contemplate the critical potential beyond the phantasmagoria of fashion, we must rely on this material concreteness, which encompasses the wearer's everyday use and bodily engagement. This provides the physical basis for avoiding submersion in clothing's homogenous narratives primarily established by designers and mediated through the capitalist trajectory. Thus, the “tactile appropriation” is the starting point for intervening non-linearly as Benjamin’s Jetztzeit. [8] This is an experience that internalizes visual stimuli and social meaning through everyday use rather than contemplating the designer’s vision.
Figure 4. Installation view of “White Shirts,” on display as part of Ana Mendes, “Salmon Pantone Collection,” 2019-ongoing, mixed media (silk, rods, hangers, second-hand ties), variable dimensions, at Galleri 54, Gothenburg, Sweden. 30 August–22 September 2024. Photograph by the author.Critical fashion must emerge only from the process of the wearer constructing and interpreting meaning, and it is a place that we can never reach alone. Here, wearers become creative agents who create their own originals based on experiential fragments arising from direct encounters with clothing, rather than hastily relying on given references or interpretations. In the "White Shirts" case, a critical reading could begin with simply wearing it naturally and going about their daily life, setting aside the work's title or Y-shaped pattern. This represents fashion's unique, practical domain, which remains unreachable when “White Shirts” exists as unwearable artwork. My practice merely provided grounds for explaining how critical fashion can only be activated through wearers' presence by inversely calling their absence. Even though we cannot reach it on our own, critical fashion will have meaning in our role in repositioning designers and wearers. Fashion has long reflected on sustainability or the necessity thereof, yet must first acknowledge itself as exposing the emptiness of novelty and satisfaction promised by capitalist consumption.
Walter Benjamin recalled that those who aimed rifles at clock towers during France’s July Revolution of 1830 were not foreign soldiers but French citizens who had served the monarchy until June. [9] In the same way, fashion must accept itself as an internal catalyst based upon its role of faithful service to capitalism.
Walter Benjamin recalled that those who aimed rifles at clock towers during France’s July Revolution of 1830 were not foreign soldiers but French citizens who had served the monarchy until June. [9] In the same way, fashion must accept itself as an internal catalyst based upon its role of faithful service to capitalism.
Notes: Unwearable White Shirt
[1] Kyung-Mee Lee, “와이셔츠,” in Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, n.d., accessed June 13, 2025, https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/topic/%EC%99%80%EC%9D%B4%EC%85%94%EC%B8%A0
[2] Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams : Fashion and Modernity, New edition, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003).
[3] Ulrich Lehmann, Fashion and Materialism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
[4] Walter Benjamin, “Central Park,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. 4: 1938–1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 179.
[5] Susan Buck–Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 23.
[6] Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn (London: The Brodley Head, 2015), 245-55. (p. 252-253).
[7] Bainard Cowan Cowan, Bainard. “Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Allegory.” New German Critique, no. 22 (1981): 109–122.
[8] Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn (London: The Brodley Head, 2015), 233.
[9] Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 253. Benjamin quotes a witness to the July Revolution as follows:
Who would have believed it! We are told that new Joshuas at the foot of every tower, as though irritated with time itself, fired at the dials in order to stop the day.
Issue 15 ︎︎︎
Fashion & Southeast Asia
Issue 14 ︎︎︎
Barbie
Issue 13 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Politics
Issue 13 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Politics