Talk with Seo Sookyung : K-Pop Stylist

One of my memorable experience would be the intimacy talk with Seo Soo Kyung. One of the most famous stylist in Korea. She’s been a stylist for many big K-pop artist such as SNSD, Psy, Seventeen, Key Shinee, and many more. Started with lovely atmosphere, as we (classmate) introduce ourselves. She’s very humble and friendly. She started off to tell about her story of how she become a stylist. So first, she start as Fashion design student, she mentioned that to be a stylist is essential to know about fashion design background / fashion history. So that you could understand better of fashion and where it came from.

Ms. SooKyung start to work independently as a stylist, as its Title “Stylist” is cool and urge her to pursue on this career path, she’s very oriented, work very hard, and has a strong passion herself to become as stylist for k-pop singers. She kicked off as assistant at hair salons and directly go to the styling at the same time. As currently she’s has her own company that has 10 workers assistants that offer styling services, so when the K-pop agency company contact her she will have to contract with them. She said, she can only do contract for each 1 k-pop band at a time (and negotiate about the duration with company). The budget will be given by the k-pop agency company.

As a stylist she got inspiration from everything, she mentioned her favourite fashion brand is Alexander Wang, Gucci, and Balenciaga. While she styling she mainly put her own styles idea into the outfit but make sure that all the style she made are match with girl group/ boy band style. All the outfit she use for styling is mix between both local and international brands e.g. Charm’s (Korean local brand). The process is that she design and after finish cutting it she will let the celebrity try first and see if there’s anything to be fixed. The idol be able to choose their own stylist as well if they want. She also highlighted that she loves to work with SNSD the most, this could probably because she work with them the longest, and by working with SNSD makes her career rising , become famous. She also tells about her difficulty as stylist, as she needs to be very flexible with time. Being stylist you rarely have your own free time and the schedule always changes. Moreover, In 2019, she has been doing many kinds of job which are professor, open her food brands, and do directing. This all because she has lot of passions.

After half hour talk with her I’d say that I’m more than happy and honoured that she’s willing to come down to cafe and talk with our class privately, as I’m her fan since SNSD still active with 9 members since few years ago. By listening of what makes her become the forefront of K-pop stylist today is mainly her hard work. She said she never expected to become famous, but if you work hard you can be anything. More than that, she never think anyone is her competitors. As The new senior stylist, she think that she’s above them and no one can come compete her that’s what really make her gain confidence. And what she’s like about being stylist the most is her title as “A Stylist” that drives her to work hard until today. More than that, being Styling Assistant in Korea $1,000 sgd per month which is not very high. This will be memorable experiences for me as SNSD & her fans, and it drives me to work hard to achieve what I really want in the future.