The Magic Shop Project: Part I

I really will try to update this blog more than once a month! I'm cutting back some hours at work so I'm going to be working hard on some portfolio work in the coming months. This is one of them!

A little background: Magic Shop is a song by BTS, and it's incredibly special to me. Although many of their songs have pulled me through hard times, this one is especially close to my heart. I often design clothes inspired by songs I like, and for this project I wanted to push myself to create not just one, but seven cohesive yet special stage outfits (one for each member). Basically, this project is what I would design if they asked me to make clothes for them to perform specifically this song.

My goals with this project are as follows:

- Design seven cohesive yet unique costumes inspired by the song Magic Shop

- Render each design digitally and in full color

- Realize at least one design in fabric

- Document the process from start to finish

So with that, let me jump in!

The first thing I did was listen to the song a frankly ridiculous number of times in a row. I do this to parse out the different sounds, the vocals, how it makes me feel. From there I looked up a translation of the lyrics (alas, I am not fluent in Korean. The translation I used is here). Using the translation I pulled out all the words that felt important and came up with the following:

- win

- miracle

- galaxy

- milky way

- reason

- live

- heart

- believe

- magic

- show me, show you

- rose, cherry blossom, morning glory

- despair

- hate

- disappear

- impatient

- anxious

- weapon

- greed

- comfort

- afraid

- sincerity

From there I categorized the words based on their connotation: positive, negative, or neutral.

Positive: win, miracle, reason, live, believe, comfort, sincerity

Negative: despair, hate, disappear, impatient, anxious, weapon, greed, afraid

Neutral: galaxy, heart, magic, show me, show you, rose, cherry blossom, morning glory

The central theme of the song is: exchange fear for a positive attitude.

After considering the message of the song and the feelings brought out when it is performed, as well as the setting (theoretically, a concert), I chose to focus on the positive and neutral words only as inspiration. In a different setting, perhaps a fashion show or a music video, I might want to play more with the positive and negative words to demonstrate growth and that "exchange" of fear. For the purposes of a live performance though, it seemed appropriate to focus on the positive message of the song.

In the next post I'll discuss the sketching process! Hopefully I'll have that up next week - I'll set reminders and everything! Until next time~