#one of my fave outfits is taemin's blond extensions with the ball cap. that look is soooooooo mid 00s

[sanstropfremir]

Hello, A rover, A gambler, A libertine. I just wanted to say that I really love your blog and all the info you give on stage designing and outfit styling, and basically any other info you have to share about what work goes into making a performance/video look the way it looks. It's really informative and I always love food for brain so mwahhh thank youu.

That being said, I'm very new to the k-pop scene and even newer to being a SHINee fan, but I am already pretty deep down the hole and I absolutely adoreee them and your insight on them (specially Taemin) has made me appreciate them as artists sooooo much moree.

So if you don't mind could you share some thoughts about the Hard era styling? I would love to hear your thoughts on it!! I hope you're doing good <3

not the full government name slfjlskjdf you can just call me d! thank you for sticking around and reading 😊

as for the hard styling, i'm a fan! a lot of people have compared hard and dcm for various reasons (mostly negative ones bc they both are proving to be controversial shinee tracks) but i'm going use the comparison to talk about the styling bc i think the intentions were really similar, but hard was more effective. a thread that's been present in shinee's post military cbs is 'shinee twist on a modern industry trend', which is not a wrong way to go about anchoring cbs, especially since it does work as far as attracting new fans goes, but it does have a built in flaw where if the contemporaneous trends themselves don't have a strong thematic basis then............obviously trying to do any kind of twist on them takes a lot more conceptual work. this is the problem that dcm had; dcm was very much a 'look we can do what the kids do!' but what the kids were doing in late 2020/early 2021 was very formless and right before the crash of the 'fourth gen hardcore bg' trend, so it was a lot of disconnected but persistant loose threads from the entire fourth gen era that had culminated into a mush. so in the shinee's stylists' attempt to make some kind of sense of it they kinda also created a mush. but a different kind of mush. my hypothesis is that the stylists and creative team didn't want to commit seriously to a specific concept bc that wasn't on trend at the time, and so that's why dcm had several different promising ideas but then botched them all on the landing bc the creative team got cold feet about going against the grain for the first cb back in three years. personally i don't agree with their strategy bc there are a lot of flaws with dcm and the whole reality/fake reality concept ended up being racist when they could have very easily not done that, but the strategy DID work and it seems that the creative team were right about fans not being as interested in concept based cbs bc atlantis got paid dust. anyways.

how does this compare to hard? well, hard has the same ideological footing: shinee twist on a current trend. and the current trend this time is an actual concept! so already hard has an easier base to stand on because there IS something there thematically to work with. all the threads are very clearly anchored in the 'y2k' but the shinee twist is that it's more based in late 90s/early 00s hiphop, which is both sonically relevant and different from the hyperpop esque candy crush that a lot of the y2k stylings have become. the oversized shapes and loud logos are all prominent in early hiphop styling (and thus popular culture on a 5ish year delay), and elements like neon colours, layering unconventional garments together and repurposing military looks are all hallmarks of subculture fashion from the 00s, namely skater/emo/punk. the styling feels coherant and put together bc it's drawing from historical evidence (feels fucking WEIRD saying that about the 90s oof) and trends that did actually exist and were worn by real people. but of course with the typical kpop level of exaggeration, obvs.

#hard/dcm as a paradigm is an interesting thought concept and im kinda curious as to if it DOES actually become a paradigm #or its just a breaking hiatus cb phenomenon #anyways. yes im still bitter about the wasted potential of dcm #kpop questions #shinee #shinee w #kpop styling #one of my fave outfits is taemin's blond extensions with the ball cap. that look is soooooooo mid 00s #text #answers