North Korea is
stuck in a time warp. Walking through Pyongyang it’s as though we’re on a 1950s
film set. Post-war fashion sprawls the streets as women are well and proudly
dressed in single colour blouses, well tailored skirts and exorbitant heels;
the men stroll in loose dull trousers, white vest and light single coloured
shirts. The city is tidy, the people are tidy.
Take a step back to
Beijing and its indisputable that while fashion allows self-expression,
self-identity and an opportunity for us to create our Own self it is also
destroying the human race by how uncoordinated each individual is to one
another. In my eyes, People in the Western world look a mess! There’s nothing
much more that can be said – how have we got to a point where we allow people to
wear pyjamas in the street or that we find it acceptable to wear uncoordinated colours,
fail to wash and iron our clothes properly?
There’s a lot to be
said for controlling access to materials and therefore managing
fashion!
However what wasinteresting about North Korea / DPRK are the children who are wearing branded
clothing of Adidas, Nike and shirts emblazoned with Manchester United and
English football stripes. How this has entered the country is near impossible
to understand.