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The Ultimate Korean Fashion Guide, Part 2: Edgy Street Style

Our ultimate guide to Korean fashion concludes with a look at the edgy street style aesthetic popular in Seoul.

Last Updated on January 18, 2021 by Catherine - National University of Ireland, Galway
This post may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you purchase through our links. Please read our full disclosure here.
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๊ตฟ๋ชจ๋‹๐Ÿ’š #stylenanda

A post shared by แ„‰แ…ณแ„แ…กแ„‹แ…ตแ†ฏแ„‚แ…กแ†ซแ„ƒแ…ก STYLENANDA (@stylenanda_korea) on Nov 4, 2019 at 3:13pm PST

Today I’m continuing my ultimate guide to Korean fashion, breaking down the predominant Korean fashion aesthetics and trends I observed on my recent trip to Seoul, South Korea.

Last week, I focused on what I like to call the first category of Korean style, a classic and feminine Korean wardrobe, so this week I’m moving on to category two, my favorite Korean fashion aesthetic: edgy street style.

{RELATED POST: The Ultimate Guide to Edgy Style & Creating an Edgy Wardrobe}

Let’s get right into it.

(For more Korean fashion inspiration, check out my Seoul, South Korea Packing Guide, my latest K-Pop Fashion Inspiration posts on Twiceโ€™s Feel Special and Somiโ€™s debut single Birthday, and my BTS Airport Fashion Guide 2019.)

Korean Street Style 101

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#HYEINSEO FW18 D /ARK /CONCEPT /PARIS 1-7 March By Appointment Only [email protected]

A post shared by Hyein Seo (@hyeinantwerp) on Mar 2, 2018 at 6:30am PST

As I mentioned in my previous article, in Seoul, the sartorial choices of young women can be very roughly divided into two distinct categories:

  • Classic and Feminine: this subset features items including girly blouses, schoolgirl check skirts, pastels and beige, romantic floral pieces, tailored jackets, and tops and skirts in elegant, flowy fabrics.
  • Edgy Street Style: this aesthetic is encapsulated by athleisure pieces, distinctive coats and jackets, oversized items, flashes of neon, street-wear accessories and grungy footwear.
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neon & filas? even angels are basic bitches . . . . . . . . . . #fashionblogger #ootd #fashion #style #neon #seoul #fila #seoulfashion #fashionphotography #fashionista

A post shared by Catherine Taylor (@catherinetaylor97) on Oct 30, 2019 at 12:29pm PDT

My street style aesthetic involves a slight neon obsession.

Elements of a Korean Street Style Wardrobe

Element 1: Deconstructed Denim

In my last post, I discussed the ubiquity of the trench coat in Seoul, and how every fashionista (and their mother) could be spotted in some variation of this classic piece.

However, the timeless trench wasn’t the only jacket I saw on the streets during my time in South Korea. Denim jackets are another favorite of Korean fashionistas.

However, Korean denim jackets differ slightly from Western offerings. Mainly because you’d be hard pressed to find a plain one in Korea. Korean denim rarely comes in “classic” form: Instead, jackets are deconstructed, embellished, or bedazzled with graffiti; while the jeans are often artfully ripped.

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Seoul spam incoming because I'm currently writing a VERY comprehensive guide to all things Korean fashion for www.collegefashion.net โœ๏ธ๐Ÿ‘ฝ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #fashionblogger #seoulfashion #kpopfashion #yesstyle #stylenanda #holynumber7 #streetwear #streetstyle #styleinspo #southkoreatravel #fashionphotography #ootd

A post shared by Catherine Taylor (@catherinetaylor97) on Nov 2, 2019 at 7:29am PDT

Me and my beloved denim jacket.

I bought as much clothing as I could fit into my suitcase while in Korea, but my absolute favorite purchase was a black denim jacket with zip detail (similar to the one above) from street-style brand Holy Number 7.

My new jacket is so versatile and I already know that this piece is something I’m going to be reaching for again and again when Spring comes back around.

Get the Look

Oversized denim blazer with waist belt detail
Click Here to Buy at ASOS

For unusual or deconstructed denim, I find that ASOS is a safe bet.

Due to the sheer number of brands and products on the site, it’d be difficult not to find an interesting new denim piece here to call your own.

Acid wash denim belted jacket
Click Here to Buy at ASOS

Element 2: Puffer Jackets

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A post shared by 13month ์จํ‹ด๋จผ์Šค (@13month_official) on Sep 26, 2019 at 2:27am PDT

Speaking of jackets, Korean street style enthusiasts LOVE their puffers!

With the weather becoming positively icy where I live, it’s nice to know that these cozy, oversized jackets can be considered the pinnacle of urban fashion.

Hip Korean ladies throw their puffers over just about any outfit and manage to make everything look amazing.

I found a plain black puffer similar to the one above for only โ‚ฉ15,000 (about $10!) in the popular shopping district of Myeondong. Bargain.

Get the Look

H&M black puffer jacket
Click Here to Buy at H&M

These gorgeous puffers are especially versatile – the black jacket from H&M will go just about any outfit, whilst Stylenanda’s brown offering below can be paired with white, cream or beige for a fashion-forward take on winter neutrals.

Korean fashion - puffer jacket from Stylenada
Click Here to Buy at Stylenada

Element 3: Urban Accessories

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– DIM. E CRES. new DMCRS line summer collection series 01 DMCRS Metal Buckle Belt – ๐Ÿ‘‰www.cresedim.com

A post shared by CRES. E DIM. (@cresedim) on Jun 5, 2019 at 3:09am PDT

The easiest way to add an element of *extra* to any outfit is with some trendy accessories.

From bucket hats to ring belts, mini bags to chunky boots, accessories can make or break an outfit and add a totally different vibe to the simplest of looks.

In Seoul, Korean girls use these accessories to add extra style kudos to their outfits. I loved the athleisure, trend-driven aesthetic so much that by the time I left Korea, I looked like an extra from BTS’s Mic Drop MV!

Get the Look

Fur bucket hat from Urban Outfitters
Click Here to Buy at Urban Outfitters
Black belt from Pretty Little Thing
Click Here to Buy at PrettyLittleThing
Fanny pack in purple and pink
Click Here to Buy at H&M

Element 4: Boyfriend Jeans

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์ž์ฃผ ์†์ด ๊ฐˆ ์ƒ‰๊ฐ ์ด์œ ๋งจํˆฌ๋งจ! ์ง€๊ธˆ ์ž…๊ธฐ ์ข‹์•„์š”๐Ÿงก๐Ÿ’™ #stylenanda #nandamade

A post shared by แ„‰แ…ณแ„แ…กแ„‹แ…ตแ†ฏแ„‚แ…กแ†ซแ„ƒแ…ก STYLENANDA (@stylenanda_korea) on Oct 16, 2019 at 2:00am PDT

Boyfriend jeans are a staple of Korean girls’ closets. Baggy denim is now the norm, with flared, boyfriend and mom jeans the most popular options.

Boyfriend and mom jeans are more comfortable than skinnies, and provide a more relaxed fit in keeping with the street style aesthetic.

Pair with element 3 , a trendy belt, for maximum street style points.

Ripped mom jeans
Click Here to Buy at New Look

Korean Street Style Outfits

Look 1

Korean fashion - street style outfit with baggy mom jeans, satin cami, sweatshirt, baggy vest, neutral bag, bucket hat

Products: Bucket Hat – Urban Outfitters, Camisole – Miss Selfridge at ASOS, Hoodie – Bershka, Vest – & Other Stories, Jeans – Urban Outfitters, Bag – ASOS.

Look 2

Edgy Korean fashion outfit with puffer coat, plaid shirt, crossbody bag, Doc Martens, black zipper pants

Products: Top – H&M, Flannel – Monki at ASOS, Puffer – NAKD, Bag – Nasty Gal, Joggers – Bershka, Boots – Steve Madden at Urban Outfitters.

Look 3

Korean street style look with oversized jacket, crop top, sweater, long maxi skirt, combat boots

Products: Tank Top – Bershka, Sweater – NAKD, Jacket – Signature 8 at ASOS, Skirt – Urban Outfitters, Bag – Pretty Little Thing, Boots – Nasty Gal.

A Few Extras…

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I feel like that 90s pinterest bitch that I'm always adding to my board, so kinda feel like I've leveled up ๐Ÿ’ If you want to see more 90s looks I found over on @depop check out the link in bio!

A post shared by Katie O ๐Ÿ’‹ (@stealthespotlight) on Sep 1, 2019 at 9:58pm PDT

Have you already cultivated a basic street style capsule wardrobe?

If yes, then these key pieces should be next on your style agenda.

Leather Jackets

Buy now at NAKD

Vests

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The school uniform an anime version of me would wear whilst skipping class to grab snacks ๐Ÿ’š๐Ÿงก๐Ÿ’™ ps. watermelon gatorade is the superior choice x

A post shared by Katie O ๐Ÿ’‹ (@stealthespotlight) on Aug 8, 2019 at 1:15pm PDT

Suits

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– DIM. E CRES., AGENDA 2018 Autumn winter Series No. 01 _ 2018๋…„ ๊ฐ€์„ ๊ฒจ์šธ์˜ ์ฒซ๋ฒˆ์งธ ๋”ค์—ํฌ๋ ˆ์Šค์˜ ์ปฌ๋ ‰์…˜, 'My favorite things.' ์ข‹์•„ํ•˜๋Š” ๊ฒƒ๋“ค์„ ์Šคํฌ๋ž˜ํ•‘ํ•˜๊ณ  ๊ทธ๊ฒƒ๋“ค์ด ๋ชจ์—ฌ ์šฐ๋ฆฌ์˜ ์ทจํ–ฅ์„ ์™„์„ฑ์‹œํ‚ค๋“ฏ ํ‰์†Œ ์ฆ๊ธฐ๊ณ  ์ข‹์•„ํ•˜๋˜ ์•„์ด๋””์–ด๋“ค์„ ์Šคํฌ๋žฉํ•œ ํ˜•์‹์œผ๋กœ 3๋ฒˆ์˜ ์—ฐ์†์ ์ธ ์‹œ๋ฆฌ์ฆˆ๋กœ ์ปฌ๋ ‰์…˜์ด ์™„์„ฑ๋œ๋‹ค. ๊ทธ ์ฒซ๋ฒˆ์งธ๋Š” 'Orange'๋กœ ์ข€ ๋” Livelyํ•œ ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„๋ƒˆ๋‹ค. ๋‹ค์–‘ํ•œ ๋กœ๊ณ ๋“ค์˜ ๋ณ€ํ˜•, ์•„์ด๋ดํ‹ฐํ‹ฐ๋ฅผ ํ‘œํ˜„ํ•œ ๊ทธ๋ž˜ํ”ฝ, ์ปฌ๋Ÿฌ๊ฐ์„ ๋”ํ•œ ๋ฒ ์ด์งํ•œ ์•„์ดํ…œ๋“ค๋กœ ๊ตฌ์„ฑ๋œ ์ปฌ๋ ‰์…˜์ด๋‹ค. – Item : Oversize Check Blazer & Slacks Color : Navy, Brown – ๐Ÿ‘‰www.CresEDim.com – #DimECres #๋”ค์—ํฌ๋ ˆ์Šค #CresEDim #ํฌ๋ ˆ์Šค์—๋”ค

A post shared by CRES. E DIM. (@cresedim) on Oct 2, 2018 at 1:50am PDT

Oversized Sweaters

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– DIM. E CRES., AGENDA 2018 Autumn winter Series No. 01 Orange _ 2018๋…„ ๊ฐ€์„ ๊ฒจ์šธ์˜ ์ฒซ๋ฒˆ์งธ ๋”ค์—ํฌ๋ ˆ์Šค์˜ ์ปฌ๋ ‰์…˜, 'My favorite things.' ์ข‹์•„ํ•˜๋Š” ๊ฒƒ๋“ค์„ ์Šคํฌ๋ž˜ํ•‘ํ•˜๊ณ  ๊ทธ๊ฒƒ๋“ค์ด ๋ชจ์—ฌ ์šฐ๋ฆฌ์˜ ์ทจํ–ฅ์„ ์™„์„ฑ์‹œํ‚ค๋“ฏ ํ‰์†Œ ์ฆ๊ธฐ๊ณ  ์ข‹์•„ํ•˜๋˜ ์•„์ด๋””์–ด๋“ค์„ ์Šคํฌ๋žฉํ•œ ํ˜•์‹์œผ๋กœ 3๋ฒˆ์˜ ์—ฐ์†์ ์ธ ์‹œ๋ฆฌ์ฆˆ๋กœ ์ปฌ๋ ‰์…˜์ด ์™„์„ฑ๋œ๋‹ค. ๊ทธ ์ฒซ๋ฒˆ์งธ๋Š” 'Orange'๋กœ ์ข€ ๋” Livelyํ•œ ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„๋ƒˆ๋‹ค. ๋‹ค์–‘ํ•œ ๋กœ๊ณ ๋“ค์˜ ๋ณ€ํ˜•, ์•„์ด๋ดํ‹ฐํ‹ฐ๋ฅผ ํ‘œํ˜„ํ•œ ๊ทธ๋ž˜ํ”ฝ, ์ปฌ๋Ÿฌ๊ฐ์„ ๋”ํ•œ ๋ฒ ์ด์งํ•œ ์•„์ดํ…œ๋“ค๋กœ ๊ตฌ์„ฑ๋œ ์ปฌ๋ ‰์…˜์ด๋‹ค. – ๐Ÿ‘‰www.CresEDim.com – #DimECres #๋”ค์—ํฌ๋ ˆ์Šค #CresEDim #ํฌ๋ ˆ์Šค์—๋”ค

A post shared by CRES. E DIM. (@cresedim) on Oct 29, 2018 at 2:31am PDT

Mesh Skirts

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. ์‹œ๊ฐ์žฅ์•  ์–ด๋ฆฐ์ด๋“ค์—๊ฒŒ ๋ฐ์€ ์„ธ์ƒ์„ ์—ด์–ด์ฃผ๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•œ ๋„๋„ค์ด์…˜ ํ”„๋กœ์ ํŠธ โ€˜ํ•˜ํŠธ ํฌ ์•„์ด(Heart For Eye๐Ÿ–ค)โ€™ . ์ด๋ฒˆ 16๋ฒˆ์งธ ์บ ํŽ˜์ธ์—์„œ ๋ชจ๋ธ ๊น€์›์ค‘& ๊ณฝ์ง€์˜ ๋ถ€๋ถ€๊ฐ€ ๋น„๋„ˆ์Šค๋งจ์…˜ (@venusmansion )๊ณผ ์ฝœ๋ผ๋ณด๋ ˆ์ด์…˜ํ•œ ํ‹ฐ์…”์ธ ๋ฅผ ์ž…๊ณ  ๋™์ฐธํ•ด์ฃผ์—ˆ์–ด์š”๐Ÿ–ค . โž•๊ธฐ๋ถ€ ์ฐธ์—ฌ ์ด๋ฒคํŠธ. ํ•˜๋‚˜ 1๏ธโƒฃ ์ง€๊ธˆ ๋ฐ”๋กœ! ๋ณธ ๊ฒŒ์‹œ๋ฌผ์˜โ™ก์ข‹์•„์š”๋ฅผ ๋ˆŒ๋Ÿฌ์ฃผ์‹œ๋ฉด ๊ตฌํ˜ธ๋ฅผ ํ†ตํ•ด ์ข‹์•„์š” 1๊ฐœ๋‹น 1,000์›์ด ๊ธฐ๋ถ€๋ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๊ธฐ๊ฐ„ : ~2019๋…„ 5์›” 31์ผ . #๊ตฌํ˜ธ #kuho #๊ตฌํ˜ธํ•˜ํŠธํฌ์•„์ด #16th๊ตฌํ˜ธํ•˜ํŠธํฌ์•„์ด #heartforeye #kuhoheartforeye #donation #๊ธฐ๋ถ€ #๊ธฐ๋ถ€๋™์ฐธ

A post shared by KUHO แ„€แ…ฎแ„’แ…ฉ แ„€แ…ฉแ†ผแ„‰แ…ตแ†จ แ„‹แ…ตแ†ซแ„‰แ…ณแ„แ…กแ„€แ…ณแ„…แ…ขแ†ท (@kuho_official) on May 6, 2019 at 10:35pm PDT

What Do You Think of Korean Fashion?

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New arrivals๐Ÿ’š #stylenanda

A post shared by แ„‰แ…ณแ„แ…กแ„‹แ…ตแ†ฏแ„‚แ…กแ†ซแ„ƒแ…ก STYLENANDA (@stylenanda_korea) on Nov 5, 2019 at 7:46pm PST

Are you a fan of Korean fashion? Do you own any of these street style pieces? Would you like to see more posts on K-Fashion? Let me know in the comments below, I can’t wait to hear from you!

Tags : Asia, K-Pop, streetwear

2 Comments
Originally published on November 16, 2019

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Alice says

    November 19, 2019 at 1:33 pm

    Excellent analysis!

    Reply
    • Catherine Taylor says

      November 20, 2019 at 5:04 pm

      Thank you Alice!

      Reply

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