One weekend in Korea. My brushes with Seoul of late have been frequent, short, and sweet, what with the turn of the new year’s 24 hours of madness and this past month’s weekend in Seoul. I’ve been partnering with Laneige for over a year now, ever since my Uniquely U campaign with them last year, where I introduced you guys to the behind the scenes of life as I know it – struggles, cat, and all. Over the past year I’ve been both a fan of and collaborator with the brand, and it’s been a blast thus far. So we decided to make our union official with a little honeymoon to Seoul..
I kid, I kid. I represented Laneige Singapore in Seoul for the Laneige Global Beauty Camp this year, despite not being very much in the way of a beauty blogger. In my head I initially thought this meant a boot camp of intensive make up classes, learning to tightline and contour, so on and so forth. But Laneige had something pretty different in mind – something much more aligned with my own line of thought..
There is a point where you have to come to terms with the idea that you can be totally yourself and also have green shimmery eyelids and golden hair. And this point is unique to every individual, of course. Some people are happy to never wear make up. Some are happy to spend every morning sweating it out along with Cassey Ho on youtube, even if that does sound like my personal idea of hell. Some can’t stand having a single hair on their body, and so obsessively shave and epilate and pluck, and some others can’t be bothered and so let it all hang. You know. Whatever rocks your boat. I’ve said this before – as long as you find your own balance, and not impose that balance on others, it’s generally all cool.
And so Laneige has concurred, if not in word, then in deed, with their latest campaign. Find your sparkling beauty, they tout, but they don’t tell you what it is – the onus of creation and discovery is on you. Instead, they provide the arsenal of tools with which you might use to carve your idea of what your best and most comfortable look is..
The right tone can cause your skin to look brighter and clearer the same way the wrong one will clash with your skin tone and cause your entire face to look duller. And it’s never really about the color, but the tone – which means to say that everyone can rock a red lip, as long as they find the right red tone! During the color consulting class I was informed that my skin tone was cool and that my hair color was totally wrong for me. HAHA. To be fair, my hair color was a really warm blonde that had faded from a previously cooler shade of ash, and I’d just never been arsed to go get it redone. So, serves me right I suppose. I flew back to Singapore the following week and got it done in grey.. After all, when a professional korean colourist tells you your hair color’s just not working for you, you don’t ignore her!
one on one styling session with celebrity stylist 같은 한씨 히히히
This was the thread of our trip, essentially, meeting all these industry experts who were there for the specific purpose of teaching us how to create the best look for us. I had the stylist-assisted epiphany that my sparkling color was deep purple – ie. the color I look best in, and so should wear for special occasions like when i want to go for a job interview, impress my boyfriend, etcetera etcetera. HAHA. And it’s true – when she lifted the purple fabric to my face, everyone in the room gasped. Very Princess Diaries moment. Or One Day: But Miss Morley, you’re beautiful! So on and so forth.
But one other thing I appreciated that stood out for me was the way they weaved in a holistic understanding of what beauty is to them as a brand: confidence, ambition, and making the most of life. On our first night Laneige threw a gala dinner with a mentoring class by Kim Soo Young, korean author and motivational speaker. This was something the PR team gave me a heads up about before the trip because they knew it’d be interesting to me specifically – getting to meet and learn from an author who knows what’s what in the publishing industry, even if it’s an industry in a completely different language! And it was – but not in the way i expected. The main takeaway I got from her talk wasn’t so much the technicalities of publishing in Korea, but the knowledge that if you’re putting your mind to it, there’s really nothing you cannot do. So much of the limitations we face are self-imposed (and fine, plenty of them are society imposed, but if we live according to that all the time we’re in a fair bit of trouble) and for some reason we’ve always assumed that we can do about one thing as a vocation, in our entire lives. Well, not so. Kim Soo Young was an author, wrote a screenplay for television, hiked a ridiculous mountain, worked in fashion, and did a ton of other things because she decided she was going to. And it wasnt easy – obviously it wasnt – but i have come to believe that some people make it look easy simply by not whining about it and by just DOING IT. And that was fantastic, to me. That talk was one of the highlights of the trip, and I have now committed to doing MULTIPLE AWESOME THINGS with my life. So thanks, Kim Soo Young.
And then with our hair and make up conveniently already in place, we got changed and huddled off to their afterparty where we met a really nice guy who is also famous.
So: a compressed weekend of glamour, beauty, and life lessons. There are few better ways to spend a weekend – that’s for sure. And I think Laneige achieved its goal pretty well – the integration of beauty and balance in a way that came across as totally authentic and absolutely heartwarming. To more beauty camps to come x
Thank you for having me, Laneige Singapore x Global!
x
♥jem