Planning: Costume Production

Face Masks

Representation

The representation of face masks in Asian street and urban culture. Once used as a common accessory for locals for hygiene, face masks slowly transform into an urban fashion culture for both Japanese and Korean streets. Face masks that were once surgical white are now decorated with patterns and come in various colours that fit with the wearer's clothing.

Face masks began to be introduced into Japanese and Korean Hip Hop and has been passed on to different trap artists to be an essential key clothing when they decide to film their music video in the far east.

An example on face masks can be seen in various trap and hip hop videos: starting with Keith Ape's "it G ma" which is a mixture of Japanese and Korean Hip Hop featuring together.

Another piece of clothing that we used are "dad hats" and beanies, an essential part of urban streetwear. Beanies has been a significant headwear for street culture since the prime days of rap. It is later developed into street culture and by the 2010's, electronic music used it in their music videos. Urban culture also follows the modern trends, and recently, the most common fashion trend that has been going on other than the Adidas boost sneakers are "Dad hats" and "baseball caps". It is frequently worn by different music artists and has been featured in many asian music cultures. 

For further research on street fashion, I have been following Instagram feeds that feature mix and matches of street clothing. Accounts such as @outfitsociety, @fitrotation and @hypedstreets posts photos daily of street mix and matches.

Throughout the research we figured out the pattern to urban fashion and how our characters in the music video should be dressed and how the camera should be used to make the clothing harmonize with the shot. Streetwear can be seen as mostly black and white with a mixture of denim, however from all of its minimal colors of black and white shades, there will be a small amount of color that is used for the mix and match according to the dresser's choice, whether it would be the t shirt, jacket or trousers.