Do Ho Suh proved that he could be a New York Fashion Week designer and a famous contemporary artist all at once with Some/One.

That’s completely beside the point of the work however and it’s actually way more serious than that. Some/One was inspired by Do Ho Suh’s mandatory military service in South Korea and represents how he felt dehumanized by the training that he received while there. Every single metal plate that makes up this robe (all one hundred thousand of them) is a dog tag. But instead of printing actual names on each of them, there are random letters and numbers because individuality is definitely not the thing in the military.

That’s all fine and dandy but how does it affect you, you ask? You’ve seen the movies “Saving Private Ryan” and read “All Quiet on the Western Front” and all, but that’s as close to war as you’ve been. Suh thought of this lack of connection to his audience and lined the inside of the robe with mirrors so you can literally see yourself in the work. You hear the clattering of the dog tags under your feet as you walk around the piece from behind and then BAM! You are the robe. It’s genius. Creepy and off-putting. But genius.

It all started with an assignment on identity at RISD in 1992. Do Ho Suh obviously drew from him past to create the piece Metal Jacket, which is basically “Some/One” without the train. After he created this, Suh had a dream about entering a stadium and walking on millions of dog tags and hearing them vibrate as he walked across them, unable to exit the stadium. From this dream, he knew he had to extend “Metal Jacket.” He didn’t have the space or funds at the time, but 9 years later he would make the full installation. And it would be magnificent.