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• “Thinking about green design has influenced my personal life as well as my works. I used to buy new clothes every season, but now when I find something to buy, I store it in the cart for a week. If I still want it, then I’ll buy it. It’s the same for food. I try to keep as little food as possible in my refrigerator because it consumes a lot of energy. Once I put an item in the refrigerator, I try to eat it first.”

The First Step with Green Design

Wedding is one of the biggest events in life. A bride wears a white wedding dress to mark a new phase in her life which is celebrated by family and friends. But an uncomfortable truth is hidden behind a wedding ceremony. A few-hour ceremony generates excessive waste. Gyeong-jae Lee launched a green (eco-friendly) wedding consulting business to raise awareness of this uncomfortable truth and promote an eco-friendly wedding culture. She uses only natural materials including Hanji, corn starch and silk to make wedding dresses customized for individual brides and make eco-friendly accessories including bouquets, flower decorations and wedding invitation cards. She became interested in green weddings when she met professor Ho-seop Yoon in the Green Design Graduate Program.

“After I studied fashion design in college, I worked as a designer in the Design Department of SBS. At first, I liked the job but six months later, I started to sense a growing gap between my dream and reality. Then, my father fell ill, and he and I went on a trip to a village in Shindae-ri, Hoengseong-gun, Gangwon-do. The village leader suggested we move to the village and do farming. He also suggested we run a guest house using a space available in the village. Running a guest house in a farming village was not part of the overall plan in the least bit, but we were happy with our new life. Since we had few guests on weekdays, I had so much free time and such days were a bit boring. So, I started looking for a graduate program, and came across green design by chance.”

“After hearing the news that professor Yoon, who is also a well-known environmental activist, had opened a graduate program for green design, I arranged for a visit with him because I had so many questions to ask about the curriculum. Since it was an evening program, I thought I would be able to work during the day and go to school at night.” In 2005, Lee enrolled in the Green Design Graduate Program at Kookmin University, and tapped into the world of creating eco-friendly fashion.

“The Green Design Graduate Program was an eye opener indeed. I hadn’t really thought about what kinds of impact on and responsibility for the environment I would have as a designer. When the professor was talking about natural, eco-friendly materials, it dawned on me to design eco-friendly clothes. One of them was plastic made of corn starch, and I made a raincoat out of it because I saw so many disposable raincoats discarded after they were used during the Hanwoo beef festival held in the village. Thinking about green design has influenced my personal life besides my professional one. I used to buy new clothes every season, but now when I find something to buy, I store it in the cart for a week. If I still want it, then I’ll buy it. It’s the same for food. I try to keep as little food as possible in my refrigerator because it consumes a lot of energy. Once I put an item in the refrigerator, I try to eat it first.”

• Wedding Dresses Made of Corn Starch

  After making the raincoat, her first eco-friendly fashion garment, she started to design wedding dresses. “While I was reading a magazine, I came across an article about a celebrity’s wedding ceremony. I was shocked to learn how much money was spent on the wedding which lasted for one or two hours. Actually, luxury wedding dresses that celebrities wear at their wedding are probably made of silk, which is a natural material. But average wedding dresses ordinary people rent to wear at their wedding are mostly made of synthetic fabric that do not decompose easily. Wedding dresses are discarded after being rented four to five times. Even dry cleaning won’t make them good enough to wear after four or five times of use.”
  
  She figured it would be better for the environment to use eco-friendly materials for wedding dresses that would be thrown away after being worn only for a couple of hours. So, she made two wedding dresses using corn starch. She found fabric made of corn starch at an expo in Japan, and made 14 wedding dresses for six months, which were displayed at her solo exhibition titled ‘Sewing for the Planet’. Back then, she never imagined how eco-friendly wedding dresses that she had made for school assignments and a solo exhibition would change her life later on.
  
  “During my solo exhibition, I tried to find someone who would want to wear one of the dresses I made. I found one, and she wore the dress that I designed at her wedding. The one-month long exhibition ended, and I went back to Gangwon-do. Then, I started to get calls from people who wanted to wear a dress made by me. Initially, I made only wedding dresses, but later this expanded to accessories, such as wedding invitation cards made of eco-friendly paper, food, bouquets of flowers with the roots on them, and wedding halls decorated with flower pots. Eventually, I launched a total green (eco-friendly) wedding service to provide consulting on all aspects of an eco-friendly wedding.”
  
  Her green (eco-friendly) wedding consulting business boomed for a while before it faced a turning point with the onset of COVID-19. Demand for wedding consultations from individual consumers continued to fall as the pandemic prolonged with no end in sight, and she was forced to change the business model.
  
  “Due to the pandemic, reservations for the service were either canceled or postponed. I couldn’t keep the business afloat with our clientele being only individual consumers. But now, I have created a manual and a system based on my know-how on holding a green (eco-friendly) wedding to offer consultation services to wedding organizers. At the end of last year, ‘Sikmulgwan PH’ contacted me for our services and I provided a full consultation.”

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• A Step toward Future

  Asked about a particularly memorable work, Lee said a customer transformed an eco-friendly wedding dress made by her into a regular dress and wore it for her 10th wedding anniversary photos which she sent to Lee. “I was pleased to know that the dress I made did not go to waste after being used but was reused to celebrate a special occasion. I started the business to make clothes with a view to do less harm to the planet. In addition to wedding dresses, I also make eco-friendly clothes for patients with weakened immunity, work attire for medical professionals for whom hygiene is critical, and clothes for infants and toddlers.”
  
  Prior to the pandemic, my uniforms had been supplied to a few hospitals that I got to work with through my wedding consulting business. In the post-pandemic era, making special-purpose attire has become a new business model. Lee launched ‘HED+’, a clothing brand using eco-friendly materials with anti-bacterial features on Amazon.com and the brand was also rolled out in Korea in December.
  
  Asked about her plans going forward, she said she is planning to collect feedback on her eco-friendly patient gowns and improve them based on the feedback, the results of which will be published in a thesis. In addition, her plans include providing consulting to 30 wedding organizing businesses nationwide to make green (eco-friendly) wedding easily accessible to all consumers.
  
  “I think environmental conversation is a relative concept. Rather than sticking to a set of norms as to what should be done and how things should be done to protect the environment, I think we should try to do better today than yesterday. For example, if I used five disposable paper cups today, I’ll try to use less cups today. I believe every little minor gesture counts and small actions taken today will add up to make a difference tomorrow.”