Interview Summary
During the interview sessions with Emily, I’ve learned that she’s originally from Seoul, South Korea, and moved to Canada with her family when she was seven years old. She’s been staying in a small town called Burnaby near Vancouver for about ten years, and became a Canadian citizen. She currently lives with her cousin in an apartment on the Upper West Side.
Emily is multilingual, speaking Korean, English, as well as Japanese because she lived in Japan for two years, and learned Mandarin as another foreign language. She’s also very open-minded with different cultures. Being the cultural combination herself, she understands the traditional Asian values, and incorporates those values into her daily life.
Even though she was admitted as a fashion design major at Parsons, Emily’s not very attached to the major just yet, because she wants to get a sense of all the other majors in first year before officially declaring her major. I’ve learned that she’s willing to prioritize practicality over sentimentality when choosing career paths. It’s also a reason that she’s interested in product design as a possible major choice, as there are more high-profit career options for product design.
Since we did our interview while getting brunch, we decided to walk around SoHo. We accidentally ran into Aimee Song, who happens to be Emily’s favorite fashion blogger. She was really excited seeing Aimee, and took pictures with her. She later told me that she’s not usually into the so-called “Influencer” lifestyle, but she appreciates Aimee’s sense of fashion, and her Korean value in aesthetics.
After finishing the interview with Emily, I want to steer this project into a fun and interactive experience that combine her Korean traditions and values as the “past” components, and let her have a glimpse of what her future could be as a designer.
