Trip to MyeongDong (명동)

Stella McCartney, Chloe, Marc Jacobs, Marc Jacobs, Chloe

A few days ago I went out on a shopping trip in Seoul with two friends of mine. The first place we went to was Shinsegae Department Store (we managed to snub the bigger Lotte dpt. store though) to check out the new season boots. Of course after a few hours of contemplation, a pair of Daks, under-the-knee brown leather boots were purchased by my friend. Surprisingly, Daks makes fairly good quality shoes so if you intend to purchase any I highly recommend it. Next we literally visited every make-up counter, accumulating our efforts on our faces- Bobbi Brown (concealers work half-well), Chanel (I know everyone knows, but the blush here is extraordinary!), Vidi vici (white eyeliner pencil works wonders), Laura Mercier (essence concealer?-consistency is a bit strange), Benefit ('That Gal' brightening face primer feels great but smells horrible, a bit like strawberry-flavoured medicine). Moving on to clothing I really wanted to check out the new Banana Republic store (chain that came into Seoul Sept '07). Very disappointed with the results though. From the start of '05 and the introduction of Uniqlo, there's been a steady increase of foreign brands such as Woman's Secret, Roots, Gap and now B. Republic. Apparently Zara will be coming in by the end of this year and of course I can't wait- when will H&M come I wonder???!!! The reason I was so disappointed was that this whole concept of 'affordable clothing' had been chucked out the window. Of course, I wasn't expecting the prices to be dirt cheap but they were just as expensive as the normal brands being sold in the department store itself which is way too hard on a student's budget! We quickly zoomed out of there and hesitantly checked out the higher priced imported goods, which involved moving to the next building via a little bridge, a real FIRST for us! The opportunity was too good to pass up to miss checking out Marc by Marc, Stella McCartney, Chloe and Vanessa Bruno. While my friend was highly disappointed with the looks of the clothes on the racks (afterall they do look different on the runway, under the lights and on the gorgeous models). I marvelled over Stella's jackets, that big grey cardigan (oversized blend mohair cardigan) from Fall '07 and the ruffle-layer minidress which looks great up-in-person. We were oohing and aahing over Marc Jacob's knits and I thought that Chloe's Fall '07 orange jackets, were really quite unique! Overall, a lovely escapade which resulted in a grey-coloured shirt, for a mere 5,900 won, purchased OUTSIDE the department store (where the prices are always and will always be ridiculously high!) and a very happy wallet staring back at me.