Hannam,
Where You Are Never Too Sure
What’s Actually for Sale
(and what’s part of an exhibition)
Being my most densely pinned area on the Naver maps—an app that you will inevitably have to download, noticing after a while that Google maps appear a little too empty—Hannam is the cool artsy and well-off kid of Seoul.
The main street, where lines of stores are separated by a wide alley and mountains loom in the distance, feels like a carnivalesque, adorned corridor of the city. Flagship stores—fashionable, shiny, and unconventionally shaped—stand like lustrous performers. Columns jut out from sleek facades; old architecture mingles with the new in a kind of playful harmony.
This is the realm of select stores, brands like Comme des Garcons, minimalist home boutiques and niche perfumeries—a market currently thriving in Korea. Among them are Unvanish, Cosmic Mansion, and the infamous Tamburins, owned by Gentle Monster—a perfumery that looks like an artist’s fever dream.
That’s where you will find Open YY, described by Ssense as “unorthodox elegance,” Mardi Mercredi with their French-inspired line and “classic yet witty designs”; and Blue Elephant, often brought up as Gentle Monster’s more affordable alternative due to the similar vibe.
The Hyundai Card Music Library—a huge landmark in Hannam-dong, is a glass building, housing nearly 15,000 music items, with more than two-thirds of them on vinyl. Just outside the sleek, aquarium-like structure, an open space features a massive mural painted on what feels like a reimagined garage with ridged ceilings and industrial walls. If you take a look past the railings, you’ll catch a sight of Itaewon’s industrial rooftops stretching into the distance.
The interior of almost each store is as deliberate as the exterior. The beauty is in the details. In the ruffled tablecloths at Overdue Flair, where a red beaded bag sits in an open gift box, ready to be “consumed”; the fabric pumpkins at Tamburins; and the natural minimalism of Yun, a Korean glasses brand that started in Berlin. At the childlike shop of Fog, decorated with toys and trinkets, they make you spin the prize wheel, later filling your bag to the brim with gifts and testers.
In Hannam-dong, shopping comes second, losing to the experience.
You don’t have to buy the egg-shaped bottles of perfume—sometimes peculiar, capturing the “explosive vitality of mushroom spores bursting”—sitting on metal tables that look soft and malleable, as if carved out of wax, surrounded by stitched fabric pumpkins, all wrapped in green carpets hanging arbitrarily on the walls. You don’t have to buy anything in a Tamburins store, just like you don’t have to buy the works of Dali while wandering through the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Just like you don’t pick the flowers while walking through an endless tulip field. You can simply watch, in delight.
As noted by Istituto Marangoni, a prominent Milanese design university, in their article on K-Beauty, the Tamburins flagship is “an immersive, multi-layered narrative that intertwines aromas, art, spatial design, music, and fashion, weaving in the ‘stories filled with fairy charm.’” But if the Tamburins in Hannam is a tastefully crafted musical, the Seongsu location is a rock concert in an abandoned basement, with singers screaming loudly and clothes flying wildly through the air—ripped, ragged, and passionately out of place.
Almost every store in Hannam, regardless of what it sells—be it trendy baby bags, sneaker charms, candles, or sunglasses—fuses art, fashion, and interior design, extending their services into a realm of experiential design.
It applies to cafés, too, of course. Hannam is swarming with them.
Among all the places scattered across the city, one that left the strongest impression was Anthracite. With its raw brutalism, cold industrial lighting, and an atmosphere that somehow felt both eerie and cold yet still inviting, it ticked all the boxes for me.
“It kind of just feels like they found an abandoned building and decorated it with very modern and classic furniture,” Emily, whose favorite café is Anthracite, concludes. It is exactly that. An interior design style often referred to as “shabby chic,” but which could also just be called “eclectic,” is something you’ll see a lot in Seoul.
You walk into the room. From the exposed concrete ceiling, tangled serpents of wires trail down, and lights hang, casting a glow over green crocheted rags that dangle above an island of plants. The contrast of raw construction and greenery makes you feel like you’ve wandered into a construction site, only to end up in a greenhouse.
When a café makes you feel raw and exposed, yet calm and curious, you know—you’ve walked into a café with a concept.
I’m going to be completely honest: best spots in Seoul were discovered by me, when I would get a little lost.
And I still think that this is the best way to experience Seoul— by letting your instincts dull out (my mom would say, I don’t even have to force it).
I turned once, maybe twice, slipping into the hidden spaces behind Hannam’s polished avenues. I passed the pastel tones of the Hince makeup store, where all the cool girls shop for lip tints, and a guy with pink, puffy lips (Sunghoon from ENHYPEN, as I later learned) stares out from the glass displays. Amuse was just a few steps away, its display drenched in cake icing, glitter, and Hello Kitty collabs—a cherry for an eye.
Climbing the hill, following the narrow streets and passing tall constructions, I stopped eventually in front of a grand red, velvet-like entrance that felt like a tunnel, ready to devour you. Inside, I was met with cracked porcelain vases, deformed sculptures, and the color red—lots of it.
That arousing strangeness, the eclecticism of mismatched jars made by different artists, perfumes like“Fig Porn” and “Naked Laundry,” the color red, swirling through the space, the bold Korean characters scrawled across the walls (“fuck”)—it all felt at once sacred and profane. A new kind of sacredness. A rediscovered sense of passion.
To make sure I was reading it right, I asked Jieun whether the abundance of red was meant to evoke sexual themes—since red can mean a lot of things, including danger.
“Yeah, it’s kind of sexy,” she concluded.
All has been cleared.