#being a 'witch' is fucking expensive. crystals cost SOOOO much money!!!

[sanstropfremir]

WayV white girl witch coven 🤣😭 Tarot card concept when!!! In all seriousness though when I really thought about it, it's just some plastic crowns and candles, but they look so expensive somehow. Sorry my very non-aesthetic self don't have any better ways of describing it, but WayV just always looked luxurious to me even back in their Regular days. Their MV felt textually so much more luscious than the 127 version, ironic because 127 lyrics was more explicit about being rich. I recall you saying before that WayV's stylist is one of the few that gets luxury fashion right. With the seasons greetings though, you literally can't even see their outfits beyond "is black". Is it the blurred effect feeding into it? I would love to hear you talk more about what contributes to this kind of look and how their stylists achieve it!

oh a lot of the heavy lifting is done by the fact that wayv literally just look expensive. as a group they have a high percentage of very attractive people, even for kpop standards. basically it's a lot of subconscious association that the stylists + designers are using to make them look expensive, starting with:

pretty people are associated with wealth

technology is associated with wealth

visible and obvious luxury brand logos

the thing about 127's regular is that i think the overtness of the lyrics is intentionally played off of the setting that they're in to make a cute lil ironic comment in the 'started from the bottom now we here' kind of way. for the 127 mv they film in a lot of on location, cramped spaces that are visually crowded with stuff and closer to the dingy side. they also shoot at a bunch of places that are not usually associated with wealth at all (at least to me as a westerner), like arcades, a pool hall, and a go kart track. the only remotely 'expensive' looking place they use is that gold backdrop that i'd be willing to bet is in a hotel lobby. they also use a lot of smoke and bright neon + warm tone lighting. all of these things are generally associated with kitsch, which in turn is commonly perceived to be lower class. there's also very few visible luxury logos; they are wearing a fair amount of designer, but unless you can recognize the burberry or loverboy plaids, it's almost impossible for a normal person to tell. also their 'main' outfits are just embellished suit jackets, which are actually not at all a common sight in the luxury fashion industry. it is however, a very common signifier of 'fancy' in the kpop industry, and has been for a long time. all of this together tells me that they were not really intending for this mv or for 127 to 'look expensive', they were intending for them to look like grimy lil fratboys playing at having too much money.

wayv's regular, on the other hand, is textbook luxury through and through. it's entirely cool tone, clean lines, technofuturist branding. their styling does not use any of the 'matching' type boy group outfits that appear in the 127 regular mv, and there's more visible logoing and use of fabrics and textures associated with ostentation, like heavy patterning and velvet. plus the two lv pieces and the two (i think?) burberry shirts. although i would not call this mv minimalist, there's also a fair amount of negative space, and minimalism + large empty spaces are usually assiocated with wealth bc of the luxury of having that space. i'd be willing to be that 90% of their sets are custom built, and those sets are all places that are associated with money: an indoor pool, a european style theatre, a stock exchange, inside a computer server room, and a LOT of digital screens and visible (expensive) equipment. plus they also set up the techno-branding with see+feel the v, which lends a longer intention to the mv itself. sm is presenting wayv as these highly, highly expensive perfect technological constructs that are above you in status. and that initial branding has filtered subconsciously into how we view them now, even if the concept doesn't strictly match.

also specifically for the seasons greetings: how they made that look 'expensive' is by:

specifically blocking out the clothing + keeping the focus on their faces

using crown props (subconscious royalty association)

applying a heavy filter that fuzzes out the details and pumps up the shine, which draws a lot of attention to the gold accents (gold = wealth)

using a theme that's associated with expensive rocks