Monica Jae Yeon Moon

Monica Jae Yeon Moon is a writer and researcher under the patronage of Kwanjeong Educational Foundation and Korea Institute of Design Promotion. Previously she studied Fashion & Textiles and French Literature at Seoul National University in South Korea. She spent an exchange semester in fashion design at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and studied fashion history during a summer program at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. She actively utilizes her multilingual skills to translate and transmit ideas in other disciplines.

She currently commissions online articles for the fashion think-tank Vestoj and translates for Frieze Seoul 2023. Her writings on fashion have been published by 1Granary, Design History Society, and Big Issue Korea. Her ideas on fashion were shared at the Digital Fashion Symposium 2023 organized by the London College of Fashion and Parsons Paris, and De-Fashioning Education – The Digital Multilogue on Fashion Education 2023 in Berlin. The UMBER POSTPAST Book she wrote in collaboration with the designer Jaden Cho where they discuss craft and commerce, cultural and environmental sustainability, and the 'Korean heritage,' alongside conversations with the curators of the Korean Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Economic Botany Collection of the Kew Botanic Gardens, will be printed later in 2023.

Image: LEDEBUT Magazine, Advertisement for FARFETCH, LEDEBUT Vol.42, 2018. A young woman is holding a phone in her hand, wearing an Off-White industrial belt at Seoul Fashion Week in Dongdaemun Design Plaza.

In my MA thesis titled 'What is Fashion afraid of?: the impersonators (2020-Present),' I begin by asking the question ‘Who gets to be a real designer?’ by observing the work of the late designer of Off-White and Louis Vuitton menswear, Virgil Abloh, and contemporary Korean designers and creatives working in the fashion industry.

The thesis deals with the notion of 'copy' on two levels: jumping off of the conceptual notion of 'copy' that Abloh had to deal with to the more material sense of 'copy' by looking at the history of copy market that formed in Dongdaemun garment district in Seoul, it reveals that in fashion, these two levels are in fact not separate at all. Paying close attention to Abloh’s interviews and the lived experience of young contemporary Korean designers, this research is a strategic deduction of what is at stake for and threatens European fashion, and perhaps what designers dealing with the colonial repercussions can use as leverage to march forward.

This research is a culmination of the skills I have accumulated since 2019 as a Korean fashion journalist with a background in fashion design. It is also indebted to the research I have been exposed to since 2022 in the work of Virgil Abloh, while supporting the editor-in-chief of Vestoj, Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, develop the book she co-authored with Abloh, Work in Progress. This research was made possible by the Pasold MA Grant and the Anthony Gardner Fund of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Asia Department.

Launch Project

Virgil Abloh for Nike, The Ten: Nike Air Max 90, 2017 – Abloh’s version of Nike Air Max 90 has visible stitching all throughout, shoelaces that say “shoelaces”, and a red zip tie, alluding to security tags that signal the authenticity of the product and a history of theft.

Launch Project

Nike, Inc., Nike Air Max, Pair of Trainers, 1992 (made), made in Korea, designed in Oregon, Victoria and Albert Museum

Launch Project

Virgil Abloh, Flat White t-shirt gifted to the creative consultant Lee KB, 19 May 2015 – Having played a set alongside the DJ collective DEADEND at a club in Itaewon, Abloh had a t-shirt specially made in 2015 to commemorate the event. A slightly manipulated version of the South Korean flag is printed on the right. In a typical Abloh fashion, the simplified flag is juxtaposed with the logo of his DJ collective FLAT WHITE, which is also the logo of the United Nations.

Cease and desist letter from the United Nations mailed to Abloh, picture taken by author in July 2022 – Abloh received a cease and desist letter from the United Nations demanding he stop using the logo for ‘promotional material for different music shows and related activities internationally’.

Launch Project

DADA Service, DADA Service X Don Sunpil BE@RBRICK, DADA Service Instagram, 26 August 2022 – The idea behind this version of BE@RBRICK was ‘instances where the fake or the imitation became more famous than the original’. DADA Service and Don Sunpil came up with the idea to use the color of jade which is a stereotypically ‘Asian’ hue. The final product has a shiny appearance, like jade, but it is actually made of plastic on which the color jade was superimposed. The DADA logo is also added as the watermark all throughout, signaling to copyrighted images that have been illegally ripped off.