Britney of Asia

People are easily influenced; when they see something appealing and everyone is wearing it, they will buy it. It's that "MUST HAVE" mentality. With celebrities also heavily influencing the direction of where fashion is going, it is no wonder why people are spending so much money! They all want to look like their favorite celebrity and it is NOT easy and cheap to look like one of the top celebrities.

I've been extremely bad at my spending even before this challenge. I slowly got better but eventually relapsed. Ever since I got interested into the Korean wave, I find myself dressing more and more like the Korean celebrities! Though I did write a blog about plastic surgery craze (I learned that it is mostly prominent in Korean celebrities) and the Chinese notion of the body as attire (Ko 93), I am ONLY limited to clothing and my attempt at skin whitening through papaya soap (though against my will). In addition to clothing, I have recently gotten into piercings and have accumulated about 6 piercings: 4 in my ear and 2 on my face, so jewelry is the "IN" thing for me right now. So what do I go do? I buy more piercing jewelry!

I signed onto yesasia and bought a total of three items. Although the most expensive one was a book written by a Korean hip hop artist when he attended Stanford, the other two were jewelry inspired by BoA and Super Junior. Though I do consider Super Junior to be quite fashionable, they are a bunch of guys that do not really influence my sense of fashion (though I do find them more girly and prettier than me). BoA, on the other hand, appeals to my fashion taste since she is cute, petite, and an awesome performer.

But this girl is probably loaded since she's been a performer for so long. I could not possibly afford the type of jewelry she actually wears. But what caught my eye were these BoA-styled three-point earrings that were not only pretty but they were BoA inspired! Even though I have NEVER seen BoA wear these types of earrings, the word BoA stood out and I bought them instantly. I didn't even bother translating the description from Hangul to English. It wasn't until after the order was confirmed that I regretted it... but ONLY slightly.

BoA styled earrings that I have NEVER seen BoA wear? Sounds kind of sketchy. Though they were only $13, it made me think back to the "Knockouts of Knockoffs" article. I have no idea who made these earrings and what they do with the profit. It just goes to show you that "consumers are more inclined to purchase 'sophisticated and authentic-looking' counterfeit designer merchandise because these products are available at a fraction of the price they would pay for the original" (Decker 165). With my untrained eye, if you were to put the real thing and the imitated thing next to each other, I would not be able to tell which one was which! But I now know that Koreans have some high quality fake items.

I'm not sure whether these is inspiration or imitation, since Decker also mentions that there is an increasing line between the two (165). I guess I'll just have to wait until I get my items in 2 weeks.

Christine Erfe blog #5

Resources:

Yesasia.com: BoA style earrings

Ko, Dorothy. The Body As Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-Century China. Class Reader.

Decker, Melissa. Knockouts of Knockoffs: The Global Implication of Fashion Piracy. Class Reader.