The fabric market: located at Dongdaemun is the building right behind the Marriott hotel, its not very difficult to find, just take exit 2 and walk straight ahead, no need to cross the street unless you’re on the other side of Marriott and enjoy shopping.
Fabric selections include, cotton, wool, twill, laces and the top floor has a whole lot of accessories.
Price range: It was expensive as compared to the Philippines but I do not regret coming here to get an idea of how the fabrics were priced. Some ranged from around 10,000 won per yard which is about 500 pesos, it depends what you were looking for but in my opinion it was just not worth it unless for single items, but its worth the look because the laces and the other lace items were so beautiful, you don’t find very pretty lace and embellishments in the Philippines.
Finally finished this blog and vlog for korea, i think for address references its much easier to do a BLOG compared to a VLOG but the vlog will give you more of an idea of how the area looks like and how difficult it was to find these locations. Here were the stores we visited and the stores that you can all consider visiting if ever you end up in Korea, although I wasn’t a fan of the items, i sure was a fan of the really good quality tights that they had at each store. They all had their own brands but I suspect it comes from a single supplier just with different rebranding. Most of the stores were located near one another and there was just one store I didn’t go to that was suggested because it was so out of the way from where most of the stores were.
V denie and E ballet shop were the first we found on the way to GANGNAM. Korea is really hard to get around on because they don’t like google maps. But we used instagram to get most of the locations of the places we wanted to visit before coming to the stores. I suggest you do the same if you want to find their addresses. As if you don’t search it in Korean most shops do not come out.
1. V DENIE
This was the first store we visited on our list, what was great about V denie were the super cheap and super soft tights. I recommend bringing home plenty. We bought about 20 pairs for about 15 usd each. They are open on Monday-Saturday from 11-7pm but they have a lunch break at around 12 and the staff did not speak any english so be prepared to use google translate and some hand gestures.
2. BALLESSIMO
Ballessimos physical store closed last year but they still have their online store in Korea, so if you plan to stay there before your trip and maybe you can have your items shipped to the hotel to avoid any hassles. At least you can contact them while you are there for any problems.
3. TOP TOE KOREA
E ballet shop was right at the corner near V denie 8 mins walk from each other according to google maps. It had the most brands of leotards such as Yumikos, Gaynors, Grishkos and Wear Mois. I loved this shop for its many items but the price range was just crazy especially for the Gaynors which cost about 150usd.
4. REPETTO
We were not able to visit Repetto because of time constraints, we had a full day of visiting these other shops that we failed to visit Repetto.
5. CAPEZIO
Capezio was right on the road and very easy to spot, it was my favourite shop of all the shops that we had visited before this. It was also the last ballet store that we visited on my list. If you are looking for pointe shoes they sell Grishko Maya, Fouette, 2007 and Smart Pointes. They also have a good collection of Ballet Rosa, Ainsliewear and Capezio Leotards. Ballet CD’s were also available in the store and they were very nice ones too.
6. BLOCH
I did not enjoy the bloch store because they mostly sold Grishko items. Which is weird because they had the BLOCH logo on the stores front, it was a 3 min walk away from Capezio. Most of these stores are right next to each other in the rich district of Gangnams boulevard strip. They also sold Grishko Maya, Fouette, 2007 and Smart Pointes.
7. E BALLET SHOP: SEOUL ARTS CENTER
This shop was one of the 2 shops we could not visit as it was the most out of the way shop of all the shops. But we were told it was also a good shop
8. CHACOTT
We really intended to visit Chacott here but it was closed due to something unknown to us. A lot of sings were in Korean and so we got to see the shop but not get in it, unfortunately.
PRICING:
If you will ask me, of all the stores the pricing for V denie was the most affordable compared to the other stores pricings, so if you ever want to visit one or many since they aren’t far from each other I would recommend taking an afternoon to go to Gangnam to just visit all of them.
I hope that this helps you in your ballet item shopping, just in case you end up going to Korea. I will also be posting about dance schools in Korea on my next blogs and blogs to help you find the places you can take class in Korea!
All the best and much love always,
Lena
