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Grand Duke of The North Vs Tampa Jimin

(I left a lot more of my initial thoughts in this one despite being off or mistaken just to show how I think about fashion versus how other people may be thinking about fashion (everyone’s internal monologue is different, so sometimes I like to show my work a little). For me, fashion is history, it is art, it is the labor that went into every garment ever constructed, and then it’s also the effort that goes into preserving historical garments and the methods of making garments despite clothing being so much more fungible than other forms of art by the nature of its use. It’s also widely underpaid, exploited, and laden with problematic imagery around bodies at all levels of the industry, so enjoying fashion never comes without some level of guilt. It’s the hobby you fall into as a teen when you’re too sick for active hobbies and you start just getting clothes for holiday presents so you want clothes that don’t hurt, and you start researching. So without further ado, my thoughts on these three looks, after all this time.)

Okay, so I think we have literally a Cold War costume reference showdown here. Because when I looked closer at the American costumes, the silhouette references I got were formal military, and then gothic cowboy for Day 1, and a military overcoat with biker touches in the construction materials for Day 2, ending up with an almost Matrix homage of a look. The buckles on the shoulders, arms and back of D1 Tampa give epaulets and the illusion of buttons to me, and just overall this looks like a cross between a historical military or an equestrian jacket (definitely Western and not European style, with the choice of belt buckles), with a touch of biker still from the choice in construction materials. I literally thought this was a tailcoat just from the construction of the jacket and the placement of the buckles: it’s what I’m used to seeing. Especially once I saw the skirting on the D2 footage, it took the official photos to clear up my confusion over the coat differences.

It may seem like an odd combination of perceived references, but, if I remember correctly, there is a direct through-line from military aviation jackets to motorcycle jackets, and those who couldn’t afford motorcycle jackets often used equestrian gear (the tangled web of garment history is wild). So the James Dean meets 1890s Union soldier (that’s the closest silhouette I was able to find on the Met’s garment collection website, a faded grey-blue military tailcoat inscribed “Excelsior/NYSM/National Guard” on the interior, so that stands for New York Sixth Regiment National Guard) vibes I’m getting from this silhouette make more sense in the context of this being a nod to American fashion iconography.

Day 2 also fits similarly with the soldier reference, because the offerings under “related” had the uniform’s overcoat, which honestly looks like the Day 2 silhouette in terms of being a long-sleeved, slightly flowy but straight-skirted overcoat with buttons, except it has the classic Gilded Age capelet of an Ulster greatcoat. It’s not as close as the D1 silhouette match, but I’m finding other photos of Army trench coats, just not extant garments, from the 1890s that share this silhouette more closely, so I feel that I’m on the right path. I wouldn’t call it an exact period match, because I’m working off what extant garments I can find online, but consider that the album is themed around the recording of Arirang in 1896, I wouldn’t be surprised if the reference was intentionally close to this period.

When I finally found the designer credited, at least for the first round of costumes (and theoretically the entire tour for the opening section and backup dancer costumes, it’s very ambiguous whether he did costuming for the entire tour or just the Korean leg, but I see enough similarities in the design language between all three looks that I am assuming that they’re all his work), I found enough of my influences validated that I chose to leave in my initial thoughts on the design references.

Quote from the designer Juntae Kim’s Instagram post caption about the group look as a whole: “445 pieces. 151 looks. 7 members. 55 performers. For one stage. The BTS by JUNTAE KIM collection, presented at the first Goyang show marking the beginning of the BTS world tour, reinterprets the seven members through distinct Korean punk looks, translating the details and aesthetics of historical punk dress into a contemporary context. It further layers structural tailoring rooted in non-Eastern garments-corsets and doublets-with elements symbolizing Korean history and culture, including the Taegeukgi, Geon-gon-gam-ri, hanbok, taekwondo uniforms, sseugaechima, norigae, gokkal, and traditional beadwork. These are reimagined and expanded into the looks worn by both the seven members and a cast of 55 dancers.”

It was the eleventh hour of writing this when this post of his claiming credit for these looks came across my Instagram feed, but I am glad it did, because it gave me a lot of context for the cultural references I was seeing but had little background knowledge on what search terms with which to begin. In Jimin’s costumes, specifically, the relevant cultural elements are not the Taegeuki or Geon-gon-gam-ri (the Korean flag elements), the sseungaechima (the head covering robes), or the gokkal (a traditional Korean peaked hat). Instead, the elements included in Jimin’s look appear to be the traditional beadwork in a modified norigae-esque manner for the Grand Duke of the North Jimin look, and pretty much nowhere else that I can spot in the elements of cultural dress and cultural symbolism listed in the post as inspiration. I would say that a bigger inspiration is modern Korean streetwear.

Juntae Kim is saying that he’s combining the way the Korean punk subculture dresses with Korean traditional clothing and Western historical corsets and doublets, so military inspiration was right in the center of that Venn diagram of punk, corset boning and doublet buttons and braiding.

Given that Korean fans have been calling the original opening look Grand Duke of the North Jimin, I looked up the reference. It appears to be a manwha romance subgenre trope wherein Russia is treated like an exotic (still don’t like that word when the shoe is on the other foot) foreign land and the female lead must tame the savage Grand Duke or something (basically those Mills & Boon or Harlequin romance novel tropes everyone’s grandma had on her shelf and the thrift stores are full of but Korean and web novels). So literally, they’re calling him Russian Prince boyfriend fantasy. Honestly, incredibly entertaining, keep it up. (I find the flowery nicknames for every distinctive look of Jimin’s incredibly useful from a search engine optimization perspective, so even if it wasn’t amusing I’d still appreciate it.)

I think the Cold War showdown jab may or may not have been intentional, but if it was, it would be incredibly funny on the designer’s part. Fashion has always been political, and Koreans more than almost anyone have the right to take coded swings at Americans (I am American and I approve this insult, we deserve it), especially regarding how everything went down regarding them being used as a proxy battleground during said Cold War. But it may just be a reference to Jimin being blond, and how he can look like two of the countries Korea seems to associate with blondes in their media: the US and Russia.

Now I’m going to break down each look separately, starting with the Grand Duke, and then judge them against each other at the end. I’m using David Kibbe’s style archetypes as a framework, but as I have said a couple of times, most notably in my Fashion Philosophy post, I treat it the same way I treat astrology, which is a fun exercise but not really actual belief, and more of a framework and categorization system made by a man with a good eye for garment design and how they suit different body types (as well as how to sort people in a way that makes sense from an artist’s or sewist’s perspective).

I also don’t use it as a die-hard set of rules, and he himself doesn’t advise that either. He advocates for using “accommodation”, or leaning into the physique elements that you have by modifying silhouettes or offsetting otherwise unflattering pieces to make an overall look flattering. That’s what I mean when I use the word accommodation in this piece.

It’s why I don’t really vibe with the fashion industry as a whole. We’ve moved away from tailoring and every designer making varied lines and silhouettes of clothing each year and into trying to convince people that clothing just doesn’t look good on them if it isn’t flattering right off the rack. That’s absolutely not true: designers have just gotten lazy and decided to just use marketing and PR teams to convince people that they need to change themselves instead of the brands needing to be the innovative ones. Diabolical, and why I have a love-hate relationship with fashion. But I digress.

So, Jimin is a Theatrical Romantic under this archetype system, the second most yin on the scale, as I go into in greater detail in this post on it from October. But basically that boils down to two important points to accommodate: narrow and curve, instead of needing to accommodate vertical (the dominant accommodation of Dramatics, Flamboyant Naturals, Soft Dramatics, Dramatic Classics, Flamboyant Gamines, and anyone above either 5’6” or 6’0” depending on gender identity (If you are taller than that you automatically have vertical, meaning you are either a Dramatic, Soft Dramatic or Flamboyant Natural)), width (a Natural’s secondary accommodation), balance (a Classic’s secondary accommodation), or petite (a Gamine’s secondary accommodation).

All recommendations are going to be first accommodating his narrow skeletal structure so he doesn’t look like he’s drowning in his clothes, and then aiming for highlighting his natural curve with things like waist emphasis and diagonal or curved lines instead of horizontal, for example. Usually in women you reverse the order, because curve is actually the dominant (you either have curve or vertical as a dominant), but in men the skeleton is generally more prominent than the curve of the flesh atop it so you highlight the secondary accommodation more. So try to spot those details as I break down each look by recommendation.

Grand Duke of the North Jimin

Silhouette

The silhouette for this look is great because it’s got one great exaggerated statement piece (the dramatic overcoat) and then everything underneath fits properly and shows his physique appropriately.

Kibbe is a great tool for me because I really can’t encode faces neurologically due to the damage to the fusiform face area of my brain (toddler skull fracture to the back of the head from a fall). I have to instead piecemeal describe a face to myself, and then guess every time I see a person, including myself in the mirror or in photos. But bodies are different. I can generally recognize people by voice, gait, height, etc, but it’s much less socially acceptable to comment on people’s body types than people’s faces. Thankfully, Kibbe offers terms that don’t describe people using weight or by categorizing people like fruit.

So instead of using language that feels rude, I can just say that this outfit, underneath the coat, leans into accommodating (one of Kibbe’s favorite words) Jimin’s narrow skeletal structure, and be understood by anyone who is familiar with his system.

The coat is fabulous, with fluffy, exaggerated shoulders and flowing skirting that moves beautifully onstage, without falling into the trap of being too long and shortening his lines, but the outfit underneath is really where the stylists knocked it out of the park, silhouette-wise.

Look at where they’ve fit the trousers, and then tucked in the undershirt and given a textural delineation between the soft, tight undershirt, the silver-studded belt, and the leather trousers. The large silver buckle just draws the eye even more to the waist emphasis, and shows exactly how you should use jewelry as your contrast in this extreme monochromatic color scheme.

You know how certain athletic disciplines are built around literal genetic advantages (ie swimming and buoyancy, basketball and height, etc)? I bet when Jimin entered the dance program at his original arts high school, he may or may not have been the right height for partnering in strict ballet (I think Korea does Vaganova method, which is rigid about height in pairings), but he was definitely snapped up by the contemporary program just for his proportions. Have you seen him jump and his turnout? It’s the short-waisted, long-legged proportions combined with how shallow his hip sockets and strong his legs are, allowing him more spring, rotation and liftoff.

This outfit under the coat leans into highlighting that narrow, dancer physique that is just the way he is built, instead of trying to work against it like so many of their group looks did, early ones especially. (Jimin just drowns in oversized basketball shorts, in my opinion. Much more of a Natural look, if we’re discussing performance looks instead of off-the-clock clothes. Remember, I believe that clothes should first serve their purpose, and workout clothes and lounge clothes don’t need to be aimed at flattering, because that’s not their job. For that matter, intentionally unflattering can be a stylistic or artistic choice as well, but it has to be done with knowledge of what is flattering on the person modeling the garment to break the rules.)

Details

The detail in this look is just incredible. Thanks to @luci-da-mente and @sashapjm for their help in sourcing photos, because I needed literally every one I could get, even the ones I couldn’t fit into the photo limit, for figuring out how exactly some of these details worked. For example, in the silhouette photo I was seeing something hanging by his boots but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from or even if it was from another member’s outfit. So I looked through some other photos to see if I saw it again.

Turns out, this outfit has these beautiful hanging belt attachments evenly spaced around perhaps inspired by norigae as mentioned in Juntae Kim’s Instagram post, with silver embellishments that are seem to be either stylized flowers or birds that could be the referenced traditional beadwork (the picture is in motion, so it’s not clear, but I think it’s a Korean traditional clothing reference or perhaps a reference to the art of Korea). I never would have caught this detail with just my access to the photos published to BTS’s group Instagram.

I also personally love all the different textures and details visible from head to toe in this photo. (The silhouette is a little more flattering when his leather trousers haven’t come slightly untucked from his boots, but that’s a cost of doing business as a performer.)

We’re got the collar and upper torso of his coat being a black fur, and it’s contrasting with the bright blond shag of his hair and the sharp silver dog collar-esque necklace with little delicate dangling elements off every few links. And then we have literal safety pins decorating the top of Jimin’s black soft cotton or knit shirt, a thick row at the neckline and then, like a stylized sunburst, a thinner arced row, and then a sparse few on a third row. The coat has leather sleeves and coarse, almost scaly leather skirting, with what I’m pretty sure is fur stitching woven down into both sleeves and skirting.

(I personally would have made the fur incorporation into those areas more visible by adding metallic thread to tack it down or otherwise used another technique to add more silver to the coat, but I don’t feel Juntae Kim is incredibly accustomed to designing for stage lighting.)

The three diagonally-hanging silver-studded leather belts keep the coat from being too oversized on Jimin without being too horizontal, and varying the sizes of the studs keeps the look dynamic. The way they match his tightly-laced, diagonally silver-studded combat boots ties the coat in with the rest of the look.

Addendum after the Goyang Behind the Scenes was posted with closer looks at the costume without its coat:

Okay, so this costume definitely had to be retired until colder tour dates return, because why is it a snug long-sleeved knit shirt under this coat! I do love the closer view of the belt attachments, which appear much more like the skirting of the Comeback Live announcement than any other reference than I realized with the blurry photos I had of them from the front, and also the closer view of the chest details, but this just lost another practicality scoring point upon seeing the full, long sleeves of the under-layers. It looks necessary for under the coat, because they have some silver hooks on each shoulder and on the mid-sleeve that appear designed to secure the coat in place while he’s dancing, but it’s probably incredibly hot very quickly under all the stage lights even on the colder tour stops. A third of the tour is in hot countries during the summer, this was poor planning. Still a really beautiful costume, just even less practical than I thought.

He’s also got on leather fingerless gloves and a functional silver-studded belt, so the aesthetic is very much leather post-apocalyptic/sci-fi being the primary concept for the whole group, and the fur and ornate details added to soften the look to suit him. It looks gorgeous, so I am going to point out the one thing that Kibbe archetypes would call a flaw (and Jimin’s color season would probably agree). I, however, don’t.

Jimin is a light summer. I’ve laid that all out in this post ages ago about his best looks by color. Basically what I pointed out then is that, while white is his best neutral, and black technically one of his worst, is that it just means that it ages him. For someone with a youthful face like Jimin, to pull off certain performances you need a little extra maturity added to your appearance by a technically unflattering color. The shadows black gives him really work in this context, for these songs and in this outfit.

The songs performed in this outfit are, in order, “Hooligan”, “Aliens”, “Run BTS”, “They Don’t Know ‘Bout Us”, “Like Animals”, “Swim”, “Fake Love”, and “Merry Go Round”. Other than “Swim”, all of these are songs that suit either hard-hitting or fairly moody interpretations that would really benefit from the maturity of the black look.

(Swim is really the outlier in its setlist placement here, but it wouldn’t have fit in the solely high energy second section at all (Normal is the only breather that section gets), so I get why they had to slide it in with this costume. Sadly, they lose most of the chest isolation choreography details in these costumes.)

All in all, the reason why I think this look works goes back to the keyword of Kibbe: accommodation. You can’t throw Jimin in a square black leather jumpsuit and have it look good. But just because leather isn’t necessarily recommended as a thicker fabric and black isn’t his best color doesn’t mean it’s prohibited or awful on him. What you have to do is what they’ve done here, and be strategic about it.

Add in some soft, plush elements, such as the shirt and the fur, scads of shiny silver jewelry and embellishments to break up the monochrome, make sure the silhouette is perfectly tailored and incredibly flattering to his body type, and just in general lean into the theatricality he exudes, and you will generally get a winning look. The flowing belt additions were just an inspired cherry on top of intricate detail that felt like extra credit on top of an already top-notch look.

However, I did have some concerns. Primarily, the bulk of their tour will be on outdoor stages, in very hot cities made even more dangerous by global warming. I was incredibly concerned about the weight of this coat and the potential for heatstroke in the US due to the predicted temperatures during said US tour dates (I personally am incredibly heat intolerant, so this is something I pay attention to in clothing). So when he came out on D1 Tampa without fur, it was a sigh of relief, despite me liking the look. Practicality, as I laid out in my Fashion Philosophy post, is always first for me as a disabled person. Is it comfortable, does it fit, is it flattering? In that order, and no rotation of priorities, ever.

My other concern was that several elements of this costume didn’t seem incredibly well-secured. Take the safety pins on the neckline of the shirt, for example. Are they stitched on or simply attached by the pin? Because when you have a sharp object near the bare skin of someone moving around vigorously, you need to sew them down and secure them closed with super glue at the very least, if not soldered closed, so that he doesn’t end up bleeding if they come loose. Don’t use aesthetic as an excuse for laziness in construction, stylists. Stage costumes must not harm your performers.

I would also say, though I love the dangling belt attachments, I’d take about an inch or so off of the ends for safety’s sake. One wrong move when the rotating stage is in motion and he could get pulled into the gears by that dangling bit of fabric. The frequent tear-downs of the stage setup by the speed of this tour and how many pieces have to be reassembled remind me of those seasonal amusement parks rollercoasters my dad would never let me ride after he worked at one one summer as a teen and saw how many intoxicated teens were put in charge of assembling them and how many parts were left over after assembly, while management just shrugged and let the ride open in its rickety glory.

I don’t think that their team is being lax in safety checks. However, is it their tour staff assembling the stage, or are they sending it ahead of them and letting the venue staff assemble it? If so, it only takes one person not doing their due diligence and we have the potential for a major workplace accident on our hands. It’s pyrotechnics, gears, rafters, large groupings of people, etc. Therefore, the costumes need to be such that, if anything happens onstage, the performers aren’t having to wrestle their costume out of the danger zone in critical seconds to safety. Accidents happen on stage, and you really have to plan for them.

It’s the little details like that that make me feel that there was little communication between the various teams working on the tour. I doubt any knowledgeable designer would have a dancer near moving gears with dangling fabric off his belt if they thought about it from the planning stages instead of after the design was already finalized.

The Tampa looks are simultaneously less type-congruent but also more practical, so they somewhat break even. I will rank the looks near the end, and you may be surprised at my choice.

D-1 and D-3 Tampa: Gothic Cowboy

Silhouette

I’m just going to spoil my thoughts a little regarding the final ranking. D-1 Tampa is a better jacket silhouette than D-2, and may end up being what I prefer, out of sheer practicality, over even Grand Duke of the North Jimin. They seem to know that it’s the best look, because this look was back on for Day 3. I love this jacket. I want this jacket. I could never pull off this jacket (black makes me look ill and leather is a fabric that looks too stiff on me outside of footwear), but I already have the 1460 zippered Doc Martens as my habitual shoe, so I’m halfway to this look already.

It’s either slightly cropped or the placement of the belt gives it the illusion of a crop, but a shorter jacket generally aligns more with his recommendations than something that is incredibly long and runs the risk of swamping him. The large overcoat of the previous look, though they managed to thread the needle, looked rather flat and drowned him a touch when not in motion (leaving it open was a wise decision). This, however, is flattering both in motion and when standing still.

The initial silhouette reference I got from this, just from the placement of the belts on the shoulders and the shape of the jacket, was the military tailcoat in the Met’s garment collection from the 1890s I linked at the start of the piece. It’s a New York Sixth Regiment National Guard uniform coat. Of course, until the D-2 official photos came out I thought D-1 and D-2 were the same coat and was deeply confused that some photos seemed to show skirting on the garment and some didn’t, but the upper half of this garment does align still with the silhouette of this uniform coat and therefore the reference is relevant.

They’ve chosen a better method of waist emphasis this go-around, with a truly enormous Western-style belt buckle visible at his natural waist and the stretchy shirt seemingly untucked underneath. They’ve kept the silhouette of the previous tour leg’s outfit for the lower body, with a tucked in baggy leather cargo trouser adding curve and a nice, well-fitted combat boot ensuring that the silhouette doesn’t stay bulky. See, this is accommodation in action. Everything about this silhouette accommodates narrow and curve correctly.

Details

This D-3 shot where you can get a good view of both the sleeve details and the way they’ve wrapped them around to the back without compromising mobility was my primary motivation to cut one photo from Grand Duke Jimin and award three photos each to the other two looks, because I couldn’t leave out the back details.

This photographer, Slow Starter, is incredible and deserves their flowers, because the official photos show the details minimally if at all. I initially thought the influences of vaquero fashion, specifically how it influenced Hollywood’s “Old West” aesthetic I was seeing were confirmation bias because I was born and raised in the “y’all” portion of the southern United States, but I am definitely seeing it across all of the Tampa stage looks (cowhide/horsehair belts or decorated leather belts and just other Old West/Mexican nods in some of the Act 2 looks for Tampa), but this jacket’s decorations are definitely a nod to Spaghetti Western costumes (actual cowboys wore denim, heavy canvas, oilskin or waxed canvas, not leather jackets, that was a Hollywood embellishment taken from the light leather fringed outfits worn for rodeo) as much as the actual cut of the jacket and the placement of the belts is a nod to military uniforms.

You can also see the beginning of the main trouser details: the stirrups. I know that he’s decidedly all hat and no cattle in this look, as my Grandad would have said, but I appreciate the reference to the equestrian elements of this look while also tying in the counterculture elements of the look. Realistically, these aren’t stirrups, because stirrups go on your horse and not on you. Even I know that, as someone who hasn’t ridden a horse since I was around eleven.

They’re honestly, when you add in the fishnet elements underneath the jacket and end up with the Hot-Topic adjacent subcultures, either off-the-shoulders suspenders or some other variation of emo/goth/punk/metal style hardware buckles, zippers, and straps cargo trousers, with their abundance of buckles and straps loosely inspired by army surplus gear and then taken to the maximum levels of adornment past practicality. But I feel that the inclusion of the loose suspenders ties in with the Western belts and meshes this look in the same way that the belts on the overcoat meshed the first look together with its underlying layers. You need every piece to have a detail tying it to the next in a look this adorned, or it looks visually incoherent. For this one, it’s a somewhat gothic cowboy theme.

It’s so incredibly reminiscent of the American Southwest and in general that entire region that used to be Mexico, I just don’t know how to explain these visual references by which I’ve grown up surrounded. To me, it looks like the cultural influences of how the former Northern Mexican territories (and their indigenous communities) were subsumed by the American settlers and forcibly assimilated into more acceptably subdued forms of art, architecture, religions, etc strongly influenced the detail choices, even if the designer may have just seen these garments as “American” or “Western”. The large belt buckle shape alone caught my eye, and then the entire piece ends up having smaller Western belts serving as ornamentation. The grouping of buckles around the wrist is reminiscent of something I can’t quite place.

Perhaps tack being stored at a barn, the fastenings on a saddle, or maybe how blunted spurs look when they’re stacked up? It’s something to do with Western riding (I had a friend who rode in elementary and middle school and I have retained a little bit of what I learned from her over a decade ago). It’s just a very well-constructed homage to how the Old West was mythologized in film. I approve of gothic cowboy Jimin.

I also found this shot from the same photographer. Such gorgeous photographs, and they capture a lot of beautiful details of the front of this look, such as how they’ve been careful to not align any of the attached belts too horizontally (they’re all attached at very diagonal angles), and the layered, almost tangled medium thickness chain necklaces he has on (less industrial than the other two looks, but these are not delicate loops. The only touch of delicate detail is the scrolled edge details on the Western belt buckles, not in any of the jewelry.) The whole thing almost seems to glimmer under the stage lights, but I’ve seen other photos and videos and it’s not any actual bedazzling, but instead this jacket being very reflective under the lights.

Since BigHit also posted a behind-the-scenes photo of Jimin doing resistance training in this costume sans jacket and with belt removed on the group Instagram, I was able to see some more of the details of the under layers of this costume. It’s surprisingly a short-sleeved shirt and not a sleeveless tank top, despite the heat (maybe they’re worried about sweat damage to the leather?) and he has fishnet armbands underneath his shirt that he’s rolled up for his workout (or this may be a workout/physical therapy hybrid. I know for me they are the same thing, so I don’t really differentiate them).

The shirt is a really dark shade of black, which makes it difficult to distinguish its details in that photo, but it’s slightly oversized and somewhat square-cut instead of being skintight, which gives it some movement onstage and also some airflow. It has silver rings attached at the waist to serve as belt loops (smart, sturdier than a cloth loop but also removable for laundering) and there appears to be external seaming detail running on a slightly curved diagonal from the underarm to the front of the collar, instead of leaving the shoulder seam to be attached at the top of the shoulder like in most shirts.

I’m going to guess that this is either cotton, linen, or as close to the two as they can manage if they’re smart, because any polyblend nonsense in the upcoming touring months is going to just be a liability. Just get a black 100% cotton t-shirt and you’ll be better off, heat-wise. Polyester is a nightmare in hot weather. It is just going to run the risk of heat rash or other sweat-based skin irritation due to the reduced natural fiber content. Airflow next to skin, please and thank you. I’ve never found “moisture-wicking” athletic fabrics to be as practical for longer wear times as simply wearing natural fibers in hot weather.

Additional look thoughts post El Paso:

(no photos, just discussion of the modifications to the costume)

It’s definitely the same jacket, but they’ve added a fur trim around the back of the collar and down the the outside of the zipper placket now. Bad idea, I’m sorry, please be a removable modification. It looks nice enough but fur (faux or real) is really hard to clean and has different maintenance requirements than leather, and they’re about to head into the summer. I appreciate the look of it, I don’t mind it at all from a stylistic standpoint as an additional textural detail, but from a practical standpoint the placement is terrible, right where he’s going to sweat into it from the nape of his neck the second he starts overheating. So my two sides are warring and my practical side won when I saw the photos of the modification.

Addendum Post D-1 Mexico:

Fur is removable, I can enjoy the look without feeling conflicted about it! Nice way to add variety to certain stops, when the weather permits, now that I know it isn’t a permanent addition. Beautiful look!

D-2 Tampa: Matrix Jimin

I would be fairly satisfied with this look if I wasn’t comparing it to the other two looks, to be perfectly honest. It has some great elements, and then some elements where they haven’t quite executed it perfectly. If the comeback live look was the right colors and textures (enough white and embellishments to offset the black) but a poor silhouette, this is a fairly great silhouette, especially from the back, but not enough detail and what detail they did add is just too yang (sharp and blunt) to suit Jimin as the sole adornments. So I just am left scratching my head about this one because I love it in certain fancams, especially when he spins for the little bit of RunBTS choreo they do, and the venting in the overcoat catches air and flutters in just the right way.

However, in virtually every still photo I have found to look at to write this section, barring the back view, I don’t see what I liked about the look in videos, and it’s stymied my creative process greatly to have to go back and forth between videos and my document to reference what I am seeing rather than scrolling up to the photo for reference. I was originally going to post a whole week earlier, but that just left me taking a lot of breaks to not taint the draft with more negativity than this perfectly nice look deserves. I’m really thinking that it in particular just doesn’t photograph as well as it looks in motion. So just a disclaimer for any heavier critiques in this section: I do not dislike this outfit, it just looks worse when you compare it directly to the other two options.

Silhouette

I’m assuming it’s the same basic outfit underneath as the D-1 outfit, because I can’t see it! The boots appear to be the same pair as D-1/D-3 Tampa, though the trousers don’t appear to be the exact same pair of cargo trousers due to the zipper placements looking slightly different (good, rotate looks to reduce the wear on one costume). I can’t say anything about the plain black shirt because I can’t see more than a glimpse of it, and he doesn’t seem to unzip the leather coat further in any fancams to see it in any detail. So no comments there.

Addendum thanks to a Stanford D-2 fancam:

Okay, so Jimin was caught taking the coat off on a fancam by an Instagram account by the username charkiv.e as he was whisked offstage after “Merry Go Round”, under the white sheet, and I thank them for posting this because it gives me at least a glimpse of the outfit underneath. It’s a tight black tank top tucked into the cargo pants, which seem to have loose belts hanging from either side of their functional belt and not from the overcoat, which he has draped over his arm. Seeing this detail so late in the game almost makes me mad, because this is literally lost under the coat. Don’t include details you can’t see!

They have really just been keeping the outfit silhouette the same (combat boots, tucked in leather trousers, tight black shirt), and just varying the coat and details of said outfit elements, which at least makes my analysis a little easier. Less elements to compare and contrast if they’re functionally the same.

This coat at least hits well above-the-knee, and therefore doesn’t cut him off vertically too badly, but even more so than the Grand Duke of the North coat, it really flattens out in still, posed photos. I don’t find it particularly flattering in still photographs, but then it really improves visually in some stage photos and most fancams. In some elements I find myself really loving it and in some ways I really don’t. It’s sort of a mixed bag of a garment for me, because I like it from the back quite a bit, but the front has too many detail choices that feel type-incongruent.

See how this picture nails the shape of Jimin? This is the exact way the Kibbe system recommends leaning into narrow and curve in a Theatrical Romantic. Especially when you see it in black and white, the way the silver grommets of the belts have been so meticulously attached along the right anatomical lines to really exaggerate his natural curvature without restricting movement just makes me so pleased from someone who loves tailoring. This is how you construct a quality garment.

I pulled this photo from Reddit, and despite its murky provenance I am using it because the lighting gives us a better view of the back details, even in black and white. It’s apparently Jungkook he’s next to, because Jin was wearing a much simpler leather jacket that wouldn’t have this level of detail on the back, and I left this photo un-cropped for the sole purpose of the direct visual comparison of the different between curve dominant and narrow secondary, and someone who has curve dominance and width secondary.

Neither of them are straight up-and-down people (curve dominance can still be visible on men if you pay attention, just look at the shape of the upper back and you’ll see the difference pretty easily between these two curve dominant men and men who have more vertical dominance), but the skeletal width and overall breadth of Jungkook’s ribcage just makes him look much less diagonal than Jimin’s narrower skeleton. It’s why this very rectangular jacket doesn’t look out of place on him but would not work at all on Jimin.

The way the grommets of the attached belts encourage the eyes to follow the diagonals of Jimin’s shoulders and upper back while exaggerating the shape a touch is exactly how outerwear is recommended to be tailored for a Theatrical Romantic. His first book was written in the eighties, so a lot of references to structured shoulders that quickly became dated (and was a revival of the forties women’s suit trend anyway), but the power-suit trend was genuinely flattering to women who were narrow and curvy, as it gave them some presence. Similarly, the way the whole cut of this zippered overcoat is almost like how women’s belted peacoats are cut was also a smart choice.

However, the way it’s behaving in photographs is exactly why head-to-toe leather is not recommended for Theatrical Romantics. Usually if I saw a skirted garment hanging oddly around the hips, I’d recommend replacing it with a bias-cut version, but you can’t bias-cut leather and get the same results as a woven fabric such as a cotton, wool, or linen garment. Hides just don’t behave like fabrics, and you would just get a garment with weaker seams and no noticeable silhouette improvement were you to construct a leather overcoat diagonally against the grain of the material. So that’s not a fix.

The reason why I liked the Grand Duke coat more than this one, despite the lack of practicality as we head into hotter weather, is the way the fur breaks up the extreme shine and stiffness of the leather. This one is just too one-note, despite the beautiful back.

Details

Okay, so this whole look is interesting because of how it merges two incredibly distinct stylistic influences into a very subcultural look. I’m getting biker, but also somehow both military and counterculture (not sure whether they were aiming for punk or metal specifically, but there was a lot of fashion overlap between the two and this is definitely more industrial and vaguely DIY in sensibilities than the vibes of most rock looks. I’m guessing punk judging by the designer’s mention of the Korean punk scene as an influence in their post about the Goyang show, but since all three looks have not been confirmed as Juntae Kim’s, I’m leaving both subcultures listed). Very appropriate for the first American shows, they nailed it.

Overall the effect is almost something out of a gritty cyberpunk science fiction movie, as if you added some silver hardware to Neo from the Matrix. The silhouette in particular is somewhat reminiscent and the color palette is the same, so that’s what was feeling like the closest reference (I don’t watch a lot of movies, so there’s probably a closer cult classic comparison. I believe I watched the Matrix for a class, as I really avoid anything where you have less stylized costuming that allows for actors to be easily distinguished. Feel free to enlighten me if you think you’ve spotted a closer homage).

I needed to watch as many fancams as I could find to see how this moved, because it read incredibly flat in the official full-body photo I have and this one is only slightly better for showing off details. Like the D-1 look, the belts mimicking epaulets on the shoulders and front of the chest extend to the upper back in a curved shape that follows the natural movement of the scapula but also works with his natural curve better than if they’d wrapped them horizontally, seen in the above black-and-white photo.

There’s a lot of layered details and some waist emphasis in the silhouette, but, unlike Grand Duke of the North Jimin, it doesn’t sell as well to me. In my opinion, it’s because they didn’t add enough contrast. Every detail on the front is angled similarly, either straight horizontally or directly vertically (bad decision, needs curves or diagonal), and is roughly the same size, and so the eye doesn’t really get drawn to any detail in particular.

I don’t hate it, I even like some choices, like how they went with a thinner leather for this look and also, as I mentioned before, the silhouette from the back, but the front leans slightly towards visually incoherent and therefore its just not to my taste. It’s funny, because I really loved it in the shots I saw on the big screen and then the back views, but the front is so poorly utilized from roughly pectorals down that I just can’t vibe with this look even though I really want to, because I really appreciate this subculture of clothing and how it looks.

I think what’s killing this look for me is the choice of hardware. Do you see the matching belt buckles, both large and small, on the shoulders and wrists? I find them too rectangular a choice to harmonize with Jimin. We already have a lot of horizontal lines in the way this overcoat vents in the front, and now there are even more rectangles being added. Just get a less harsh buckle and I’d find it less jarring. Even reuse the curved Western buckles from the D-1/D-3 gothic cowboy jacket and they’d suit him better than these, despite not quite meshing with the stylistic references of the look.

They’re really not using enough silver to break up this look, especially below mid-chest. When the minimal amount of silver adornment I’m noticing to break up how extremely monochromatic this one looks from the front is either very small silver grommets that disappear under the lights, thin silver zippers that also fade out, and these silver buckles that aren’t too my taste, with only a dull silver chain necklace to complement the look that’s being hidden underneath the neckline of the coat somewhat and some thin chain bracelets. I am also having trouble even figuring out the construction of the coat even with good photos, and have to resort to fancams, which takes much longer (and delayed me by another week on writing just this section. The other section was finished directly after Tampa, with minimal tweaking.)

One fancam in particular, from an account on instagram by the handle pinkcowqueen25 (thank you for your inadvertent service to my piece, apologies if this is not what you wanted it used for), was well-lit enough to really capture the detail on the front while also getting him standing still and in motion, so that’s the video I worked off the most to figure out the construction of the overcoat.

There’s a lot of venting going on in the construction and therefore it’s really difficult to determine which seams are decorative and which are functional zippers in still photographs, especially with the glare of the stage lights.

For example, I see some open zippers down the sides of his thighs, in the skirting of the overcoat, that allows for it to open on both sides right along where the side seams of most trousers are, and give him range of motion but also some flexibility on whether or not he wants that seam open. This is a really practical zipper placement, both in functionality as already mentioned but also because it’s a really good seam to add a flash of silver along for design purposes. However, I would consider this another case of a designer clearly used to designing commercially and not for the stage, because this is just not a visible detail unless you’re literally right up on it. The zipper needs either to be larger or to have silver thread running along the outside of it to draw attention to it, and that’s such an easy fix that it’s obvious stage looks haven’t really been this designer’s focus before, because I’m seeing a lot of intricate detail across all of the stage costumes that is utterly wasted on the audience.

I think I’ve mentioned loving putting my own fashion looks together but being hopeless with makeup because I first learned it for stage makeup, and therefore I still need to unlearn emphasizing your face for the cheap seats for ballet, which looks clownish in person. This designer is kind of the opposite, with all of these garments looking really nice, detailed and tasteful when you zoom really far in, but from less high-quality fancams or phone cameras and therefore from seats where audience members weren’t as close, the majority of the effort he put into these garments gets lost. Since all three looks seem to have similar choices regarding details and textural elements, that’s why I’m operating under the assumption that the designer for the later two looks is the one the first one is attributed to, Juntae Kim.

He’s a higher-end, avant-garde streetwear Korean designer (heavily inspired by Vivienne Westwood and antique garments like corsetry and studied in London before returning to Seoul to found his brand, according to this I-D article), and I personally would not buy from him even if I had that kind of disposable income, just from what I’ve seen from his brand’s social media page. It’s nothing especially groundbreaking from a design perspective to me, but then I have sensory issues and don’t vibe with baggy clothes and the fabric choices he’s going for most of the time. Some pieces are interesting (he makes some lovely outerwear and has a great eye for textural embellishments), but the color palette is so excessively neutral that even the nicer pieces lose me, and it’s not like I have that kind of money any way (I window shop most clothes, I only thrift nicer garments, and nothing luxury or designer has fallen into my lap at a price point that I can justify).

I really don’t approve of the whole approach of using commercial fashion designers to work on stage costumes instead of professional costumers for stage productions in general. There’s very much a difference in philosophy between a custom luxury clothing designer, who makes a beautiful garment to be worn in different environments and lightings, with viewers seeing the wearable art up close, and a costume designer, who is designing an outfit for a specific set with specific requirements that must be met. Just think about it for a second.

When the opera, the ballet, or classic musical theatre has their costumes, they are designed to be visible from the cheap seats under stage lights, everything on the costumes is incredibly secure or easily repairable backstage and every non-ensemble member costume has to be distinctive enough yet cohesive as a cast because again, the cheap seats have to be able to parse the plot without understanding the dialogue in opera and ballet, and the costumes have to fit everyone playing the role. Does that sounds like it fits the brief of someone who should be designing for a group performance more than a luxury designer used to designing for a sample size and then sizing up and down? You would be surprised at the number of award-winning costume designers for movies who got their start costuming for opera and ballet, including this past year’s Oscar winner. It’s just a greater role-match, overall.

I don’t think this designer is unqualified for this job or in any way untalented, however. I would prefer a Korean commercial designer to a non-Korean costume designer, with the traditional elements incorporated into this tour that need cultural knowledge to be handled deftly. I also genuinely like his eye for silhouette and texture, after all, and his choice of stylistic influences. I would argue, though, that the habits he developed throughout his career were visible in the choices he made for this collection even before I went skimming through the rest of his portfolio, and I knew instantly upon seeing these costumes that these were designed by a commercial designer and not a costume designer just by the initial choices made. It’s dramatic in a daylight setting without considering the context of the actual evening concert setting and the viewing audience. Very “edgy streetwear designer” decisions, but it can’t be helped.

Overall Ranking

I thought no subsequent looks would overtake Grand Duke of the North Jimin for me, but Gothic Cowboy Jimin is just a better and more practical silhouette, and when you take into account the removable fur accent they’ve added and removed, it has a lot of versatility that Grand Duke Jimin just doesn’t have. However, it was close, because I really love the grandeur and details of the Duke. Matrix Jimin is a very distant third, because it really only suits my tastes in videos, or from the back in photos. I don’t like the front of the overcoat unless it’s in motion, and that’s just because of the choice of details being somewhat too industrial and linear and therefore type-incongruent for Jimin (rule of thumb is curves and triangles/diagonals, not rectangles and horizontal/vertical lines).

I think my biggest gripe is that none of these looks had quite enough sparkle for my liking. Gothic Cowboy Jimin and Grand Duke of the North Jimin comes fairly close, which is why I like them, but they need to commit to the shine a little more. Just compare any of the three looks to the Jimin performance costumes from Lie and those were admittedly not all perfect silhouette-wise, but detail-wise they understood the assignment. Whoever approved these looks needed to go in with either a bedazzling gun (less permanent, not as smart) or a leather needle and some metallic silver thread (my personal preference) and go ham on adding more shine. All they need to do is just follow the existing seam lines, and we’d have a noticeable improvement. Keeping the long blond hair is absolutely necessary for at least as long as they don’t improve the contrast of this set of looks, because it breaks up the starkness of the black leather and provides some motion and some extra variety depending on how he chooses to style it on that particular stop.

But overall, these are incredibly interesting choices for stage costumes, and have given me enrichment for literally months, so I shouldn’t complain. I live for these sorts of things to pick apart like an under-stimulated terrier. Three looks that are similar enough to be easily compared yet different enough to be contrasted, presumably all by the same designer, worn for the same purpose, is like a present designed just for me. Now, onto dissecting the first 10 looks from Act 2, which hopefully won’t take me nearly another two months.

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