Half Full. Half Empty.

The crazy markets in Korea.... I don't understand how our earth is still alive after this much crap we pump into it.

Why, hello.

I've MIA-ed from blogging the past month was because every single night I've been working on numerous rebranding booklets for my company.

I'm back from Korea.
Where do I start.
Yesterday my boss saw me visibly extremely angry and I didn't even try to hide it. Having only slept four hours the past night in Korea after lugging seventy pieces from our new collection back to my hotel room to style into looks, I was pissed, stressed, tired and frustrated.

Essentially the past four days, I got a free trip to Korea to go shopping for clothes and to help style. Hello, why should I complain? But the fact is that the people who run this business, run a business.

The area around the office. Super relaxing.

Day 1

The first day, we arrived at the Korea office and had a meeting with the merchandisers to brief them on the new way of buying. They took us to eat budae jigae (I requested it but it still wasn't good as NYC's Pocha 32- I guess the company of good friends does make things taste better) and then my boss and I headed to a night market to check out the styles and prices so I could mentally prep for the next few days. I was alarmed. The area was very MK- loud clubbing music outdoors, peopel lugging huge bags of clothes out onto the pavement waiting for busses to cart them away. The prices were ridiculously high. Now I know why H&M and Zara do so well: they have their own factories that cuts cost extremely low. Even at wholesale price, I could probably find something just as nice or even nicer at Zara at retail price. That night I was praying hard because I didn't see anything that could work with our collection.

Day 2

9:30 we were at Dongmyo to start our first round of retail buying. Ended up with 27 out of 70 pieces for our collection. I pulled out my hand to take the bag from the shopkeeper and she looks and says "ippuda!" Apparently Koreans have stubby fingers. We went back to the office with our huge bags and did quality control checking to make sure we could ship out the garments. Our company treated us out to dinner for bulgogi. I FOUND RED MANGO. kekeke

The office outside. Beautiful trees.

Day 3
9-3:30: shopping marathon. We purchased the remaining pieces of our collection. I couldn't believe we did it. I was given a very small sum of money for this new collection and in the end, we had 71 items. Prior to this, the merchandisers would only buy t-shirts for $10 a pop but since I wanted to introduce more tailored items such as dresses, jackets and accessories which are pricier, I was initially extremely afraid that I wouldn't be able to meet the 70 item requirement. Sulongtang for lunch, another round of yogurt frappes at a local coffee shop and Korean fried chicken for dinner (omg... KFC makes me sick but I could eat Korean fried chicken forever). Then from 9:30 till 3:30 I was at my hotel room styling looks on myself (note to self: insist on getting a fit model next time).

Day 4
Taught the merchandisers how to style the garments and how to piece them together for the photoshoot. Stopped by Dunkin Donuts for souvenirs (how ironic, us Americans) and then flew back.

All in all, it was a stressful but good trip. I enjoyed being away from everything, especially my computer for four days. The area that the office is located is in this really nice picturesque neighbourhood with small cafes and Korean restaurants. The trees had turned lemon yellow and the air as brisk- it reminded me of Canada and the autumn I never had in freaking hot Hong Kong.

But yesterday, I just hit rock bottom. As soon as I got off the plane, back home and had dinner, I started to work again. But I was so tired I couldn't coordinate my hands and head to type out all the style numbers to send to Korea. And then I was back in the office on Friday, and mentally brokedown in front of my boss. The exhaustion from carrying the weight of this project just got to me last night. My colleague gave me an update on the brand web template which we had brainstormed together and I last minute, gave up my baking to design yet another visual book so that they could organize the design and IT teams to start the project while I was in Korea. Turns out, there isn't enough time nor do people want to really start this project. So now the whole template has been watered down to very little change which doesn't work with the philosophy of this brand.

I was burning with anger. I'm not angry because of their ignorance of fashion, I am angry that I am presenting a solution that '1+2=3' but instead, they insist on trying out '1x2=3' or '1-2=3'. In Korea, I asked the merchandisers if they had a steamer to iron all the clothes out prior to this coming Monday's shoot. They said no because they never needed one before. No kidding, your collection used to consist of T-shirts but now we have dress shirts, blouses and jackets. That seriously alarmed me. I was actually very scared after they reported that to me because that thought never crossed their minds. Were you seriously expecting to just throw on wrinkled dress shirts on the model to be photographed? I was mortified. Any fashion person would be mortified. It is the one thing that designers are anal about when presenting a runway collection. Thankfully, they are getting a steamer, clothing rack and lint roller for Monday.

But now this whole web template is pissing me off. I am pissed off because there is no leader in this whole project. I am only a lowly assistant so I can't order IT and Design team to do what I want but I have thought through this entire friggin process for a reason- not to say it's a 'me, me, me' project- initially I never mentioned to anyone that I was in fact doing most of the work because I truly wanted to see this go through and if it meant giving credit where credit was not due, so be it.I thought about the entire process from web layout to merchandising and styling to photography to the philosophy of the company to the target customer because I wanted to see this thing actually run so I wanted to answer all the questions so that the numerous teams wouldn't run into any problems. But the fact is that I have been stretched so thin that I am exhausted, stressed and tired. I initially planned to have my portfolio site up and running for December which I sacrificed for this project. I stayed up every night for the past three weeks doing this, getting things printed and sent to the appropriate teams because I knew the deadline was fast approaching. And then I was told this was going to be a failure by the leaders. Leaders, in my opinion, need to be optimistic and need to spearhead a project by getting people together to go in one direction- don't tell me it's going to fail. If you tell your employees that it's going to fail BEFORE it happens, why should anyone want to invest in a perceived failure?

ARGH. I just wanted to cry yesterday except I was more angry than sad. I went out to eat but didn't feel hungry so I wanted to get some retail therapy to make myself feel better but I didn't feel like shopping. You know there is a problem when I don't feel like eating or shopping. I just felt lost and purposeless.

My last bargaining chip is in these photos. I don't know how this photoshoot is going to look (my gut says they won't look good because I have issues with that model. Come to think of it EVERYONE has issues with the model save one person), but right now I am banking on the styling and the collection itself. I don't know why God is making it so difficult to do anything here, but I trust there is a reason.

Here we are again. I am standing at the point that I was struggling with last year. I realized, no matter at what age you are at, people often just throw their words around. They want a brand relaunch, so I went through with it only to realize that their words really meant nothing. I take people's words too seriously but that is because I truly want to believe what people say actually matters. But in the end, the only person that is disappointed, is me. Because I valued what they say but down the road, saw that they weren't sincere.

I was supposed to see a movie with a colleague last night too but apparently she forgot and scheduled to play mahjong with friends. Great, my greatest two pet peeves: flakers and people who throw words around all in one day.

I want to start my own company. If the only person to take me seriously is me especially when I've been OTing every night, I might as well be my own CEO. I can save a few white hairs on my head and get ahead somewhere. At least when I'll be fighting, I'll be fighting for what matters and what I want personally in my own thesis company- not internally trying to rally people who I technically have no power over. I watched 'Up' again on the plane ride there. You ask why I am obsessed with Pixar. John Lasseter, the founder of Pixar, came realizing that if he wanted his dream to be realized, he had to do the hard work. He stayed up hours and hours over the computer animating. That kind of humility as a leader really speaks to me. Leaders should know how to lead. They need to provide suggestions on how to get people to solve a problem and be more involved in the issues that need to be worked out. You do not simply say "here is a problem. Brainstorm and get back to me." -_-

I am extremely moralistic. I am also extremely logical. The latter was created thanks to a fear I derived at my Toronto church. People always thought "oh those artistic people are always about feelings. They don't think with their heads." With that kind of thought, those who deigned themselves as 'philosophical' drove me to be extremely logical in my arguments for design. Everything I did these past few weeks for the brand launch was logically thought out with a reason beyond "just to make it pretty". And now they are giving me extremely illogical reasons to why they want things done the way they are. That makes me even more frustrated because now the tables have turned. The business people are the illogical, feely ones and I am the designer who thinks with the head. They say "just do it," without little regards to how.

You ask me if I see the glass half empty or half full. I say, if the glass exists, it was designed to be filled and not empty.

Outtakes: