• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.75-87
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• 2017

Sensitivity has become more important in relation to design in the changing social environment and atmosphere. In the West, the concept of aesthetics has long been established but in the East, only in the seventeenth and eighteenth century China did the discussion begin. In Korea, where the first scholarly discussion on aesthetics began around 1929, more and more rigorous and theoretical discussions are emerging now. Korean beauty consists of the beauty of no-artfulness and the beauty of natural artfulness. Japanese beauty consists of the beauty of half-articulation and the beauty of articulation. While both Korea and Japan base their sense of beauty on nature, Korea emphasizes nature as it is while Japan values artful decorative elements. Especially in modern Korean fashion, the characteristic Korean aesthetics of un-artfulness appears in various expressive techniques such as the movement with natural gathering, the use of natural materials like cotton, the harmonization of black and white, and a simplified silhouette. In Japanese fashion, one can see techniques such as: the beauty of half-articulation expressed through the ambiguity of shapes, colors, and genders or simplicity and paucity using straight lines, the beauty of articulation expressed with bright flower prints and ornaments, accessories of Obi and feathers and the transformed silhouette.