• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.161-175
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• 2016

Sensitivity has become more important in relation to design in a 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 the discussion had begun. In Korea where the first scholarly discussion on aesthetics had begun around 1929, more and more rigorous and theoretical discussions emerge nowadays. Korean beauty consists of unplanned Beauty and unplanned planned Beauty. 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 the nature as it is and Japan values the artful decorative elements. In modern Korean fashion, the characteristic Korean aesthetics of unplanned Beauty appears in the various expressive techniques such as the movement with natural gathering, the use of natural materials like cotton, the harmonization of black and white, and simplified silhouette. Also, there are plays on balance and proportion using straight and curves lines and variegated colors and creative printing, intentional asymmetry, and destrution.