Confinement

Confinement is a pop up shop that my team members and I created for Gentle Monster- a Korean eye wear brand. They expanded into the US market recently but only have two stores; one in New York, NY and another in Los Angeles, CA. The purpose of this pop up shop is to see if the US market is ready for this eyewear brand so we decided to look for a place with a high asian demographic so we landed in San Francisco. Gentle Monster Stores are basically art galleries. They collaborate with local artists and constantly change their designs.  So for our concept we wanted to bring in aspects of both San Francisco and South Korea. 

A major part of San Francisco is Alcatraz, the Federal Prison on Alcatraz Island that is no longer open, except for tours. But for 29 years it housed some of America’s most prolific criminals. While in South Korea, the beauty standards are set very high, thus most men and women get plastic surgery done to fit into the perfect beauty mold that exists. It felt symbolic to combine the two aspects because one is physical confinement, while the other is akin to being confined to societal pressure and expectations.