Korea is pop culture's secret weapon. From K-pop to K-beauty and Seoul's take on the hypebeast, Korea is the first country to really challenge the United States as a cultural epicentre of the world.
• 10-Step Skincare: This decade saw Korea make its way to the centre of the global skincare industry. Korea made skincare fun, sheet masks trendy, and peaked our curiosity about the most obscure of ingredients — like snail slime and cica. K-beauty also inspired us to experiment with essences, ampules, and BB creams in our skincare routines, and reintroduced many to the world of toners. Korea got us serious about skin care this decade, and the beautiful men of K-pop also did their part in introducing men's makeup to the mainstream.
• K-Pop Puts Seoul on the Map: Before the 2010s, when we said Fashion Week, most of us immediately thought of the big four fashion capitols — London, Paris, New York, and Milan. But this decade saw a real shift in putting smaller fashion weeks on the map. From Nigeria's Lagos Fashion Week to Denmark's Copenhagen Fashion Week, and particularly Korea's Seoul Fashion Week. K-pop's influence on the West started in 2012 when Psy's viral "Gangnam Style" music video reached a record-breaking 3.4 billion views on Youtube. After Psy introduced the West to K-pop, we couldn't get enough. In the past year, the global success of the K-pop scene, with bands like BTS and Blackpink, has skyrocketed to international acclaim and influence. Case in point: Lisa from Blackpink was the sixth most powerful dresser in the world for 2019, according to Lyst.