A Milanese derby in Seoul

The Derby di Milano catches the eyes of the whole world. The perception that you have of the match, the environment, the emotional and stylistic load can change from country to country. We tried to understand how a derby is lived 12,000 kilometers away from San Siro, what unites Milan and Seoul and how fashion can generate sport - and vice versa. The photographic story of the Derby comes from Dongdaemun, the new center of the Korean capital's fashion industry, the ideal place to mix the culture (aesthetics and sports) of South Korea and the Italian one. The shots of @juphoto__ and @harryphoto_kr of Team First Football Club Seoul in the Capo Football Store were captured during the match dominated by Inter, a "live" shooting that combines the aesthetic and sporting passion of Koreans towards Italian football: the jersey and the pitch.

In the last ten years Seoul has become one of the new centers of world fashion, thanks to the creativity in street style that has followed the same trajectory as Tokyo, which first noticed the revolution from below that started from Harajuku and then expanded all over the world. South Korea was also one of the countries where the trend of the football shirt interpreted as a fashion object has depopulated in recent years. In fact, an archipelago of mini-brands, stores and creative soccer teams was born that drove an aesthetic movement inspired among others by the Les Vêtements de Football drops, whose jerseys were worn on the sides of the catwalks but also on the stages where the K bands -pop have rewritten the rules of musical entertainment.

The football shirt - and that of Inter in particular, in fact, combines two distinct souls, moved by different interests: on the one hand there is the coolest soul - represented by the charm of Milan, the world capital of fashion - while on the other there is the soul of the fan of a club who has founded his values on diversity and inclusiveness categories that in Korea are represented respectively by Team First Football Club Seoul and Inter Club Korea: two shades of the same sport, but with two opposite ways of conceiving the same.

Doheon Kim, president of Inter Club Korea, spoke to us about this aesthetic, often linked to Italian football and matches such as the Milan Derby. Officially, the only Korean Nerazzurri fan club has 62 members from two different generations: there are those of the first generation, in love with Inter since the time of the Ronaldo The Phenomenon; there are those of the second generation, younger, who chose these colors in the period of the treble signed by José Mourinho.

"Derby is very special to us, we always want to see our team overthrow its rivals so even when the Derby is 4:45 am here in Korea we stay awake to see the game."

Doheon explained to us that Serie A does not have a fandom comparable to that of the Premier League - the most followed league in Korea for patriotic issues related to Heung-Min Son, hands down the best Korean player in history - but the true fans do. they are close to Italian football for its style, both on and off the pitch: from Catenaccio to the parable of Roberto Baggio, from the overwhelming history of the 2006 World Cup to a strange "perversion" for Marco Materazzi. But he is far from the grass that the Italian style has made and still makes the difference:

"In the middle 2000s, many young Koreans wore Inter, AC Milan and Juventus clothes, such as jackets, windbreakers, padded coats, etc. Even people who didn’t watch football, owned some Italian football teams' merchandise. The reason for that is that Korean people are very fashion-conscious so whenever there’s a new trend, people tend to wear similar clothes. At that time, young people thought the Italian football team's logo and fashion were cool. I’ve heard that some people began liking Italian football by wearing it."

Those two souls who today bring that virtuous circle around the world of football to life are in Doheon's words, divided between style and pitch, between fashion and cheering. Even when he talked to us about the new Inter logo, instinct led him to take sides with the most fundamentalist group of fans, but at the same time reason made the "cool" soul prevail and more linked to a commercial aspect of football:

"Speaking personally, not as the president of Inter Club Korea, I prefer the traditional Inter logos because it is more familiar to me. However, I admit that a simple and intuitive logo is good for collaborating with various fashion brands. Also, some people who are not interested in football may be reluctant to wear something with a complex and weird football team logo’s pattern. As a football fan, I prefer the traditional logos but I respect the initiative to try new things."

The Derby was an opportunity for confrontation between different cultures, physically and conceptually distant, which describe opposing ways of experiencing sport even though there is not one right and one wrong. What the words of the president of Inter Club Korea and the shots of Team First tell is the bond that unites football and fashion, both driven by passions that often cannot be controlled - even 12,000 kilometers away.