K-Leather Taste Makers: Explaining Leather in Seoul

Three days of seminars entitled K-Leather Taste Makers. Lineapelle exports the all-round value of Italian leather to Seoul and talks about its excellence to a significant selection of the Korean creative community: stylists linked to Seoul Fashion Week, the style offices of important players in the automotive and interior design sectors, students from Hongik University

 

Exciting. Inspiring. Two adjectives, one summary. Lineapelle returned to Seoul for three days of cross-cultural seminars for the Korean creative community called K-Leather Taste Makers. Results? The first: for the umpteenth time, a real interest and hunger for knowledge of Italian leather and its qualities, above all circular, has emerged on the part of a market that chews innovation at every hour of the day and night. The second is that leather is increasingly presenting itself as a lifestyle solution, a concept to be understood as the exponential sum of all its possible uses.

K-Leather Taste Makers, pt. 1

The first day of seminars, Friday, 5 April, demonstrated precisely the latter consideration by involving an audience of style offices from the Korean fashion, interior design, and automotive worlds. At the futuristic location of Switch22, Lineapelle held three workshops that sold out. Three ‘leather lessons’ based on the opportunity not only to talk with Orietta Pelizzari, Lineapelle’s global fashion consultant but also to touch samples and leather samples. A cultural, educational, and promotional combo that – for the umpteenth time – hit the mark. Hyundai Motor, LX Hausys, Fila, Kolon, Woo Young Mi, Hyundai Transys Kia.

These are just some of the companies whose product design offices attended the leather lessons organised by Lineapelle. Participation, theirs, was by no means passive, as seen in the expressions and comments of many upon discovering leather and its infinite possible declinations. Because the Korean one – in particular – is a world that has very basic knowledge of leather and often little that can be translated into its contemporary and innovative use. The knowledge that is found in creative seminars such as those proposed by Lineapelle, the possibility of moving up a level. As well as the opportunity to share the beauty, quality, and innovation of Italian leather in a participatory manner.

K-Leather Taste Makers, pt. 2

The second step is Monday 8 April. Location: the avant-garde setting of the DDP, aka Dongdaemun Design Plaza, a multidisciplinary space managed by the Seoul Design Foundation. Target: high-level stylists connected with Seoul Fashion Week and, also, some representatives of the beauty world. This transversal presence is significant in terms of possible brand extensions but also from the point of view of the circular narrative of the tanning process. A presentation that, in turn, knotted the tale of how leather manages to make even all its processing waste circular with its infinite stylistic versatility. “A perfect presentation,” says Chung Chung Lee, creative director of Lie Collection, “which above all allowed us to delve into and discover some important characteristics of the circularity of leather. The testimony that sums up those of all those present.

K-Leather Taste Makers, pt. 3

The third and final stop was on Tuesday, 9 April, when Lineapelle returned to Hongik University to reaffirm the strategic educational nature of a relationship that began in 2019 and has brought tangible results. A relationship that will continue and of which “we are truly happy and satisfied,” admits Lee Seung Ik, lecturer in the Korean university’s Textile Art and Fashion Textile department. There were 40 students present “in Fashion Design, Textile Design, and Textile Art,” explains Lee Seung Ik, “who attend different courses and, in some cases, are already involved in master’s degrees at high-level brands.

An ideal audience, in short, to tell ‘why Italian leather,’ explains Orietta Pelizzari, ‘is circular in all respects and what are all the peculiarities that define its quality,‘ as well as its versatility and excellence. Super interest and, above all, strong attraction for a material of which they did not know all the possible creative declinations. The relationship between Lineapelle and Hongik started in 2019 and has resulted in the development of 3 creative projects. Thanks to this collaboration, the Seoul Institute was able to access some government funding that enabled it to incorporate some state-of-the-art machinery in its classrooms.

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