ITAA - KSCT Joint Symposium

Remembering the Unseen: Memory and Life Histories of Male Fashion Models in 1970s South Korea

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Abstract

This study examines the emergence of male fashion models in 1970s South Korea and their role in the country’s rapidly modernizing fashion industry. Drawing on life-history interviews with two now-elderly models, the research traces how they navigated professional identity, economic precarity, and social stigma in a context shaped by Confucian gender expectations. Using Mandelbaum’s life-history framework and a memory-studies lens, the analysis identifies key dimensions of their working lives, turning points in career trajectories, and later adaptations as they aged out of a youth-oriented industry. The findings reveal severe gendered wage disparities and unstable working conditions, but also highlight participants’ strategic transitions into show production, education, and cultural heritage work. By documenting these rarely recorded experiences, the study contributes to gendered labor history and Korean fashion scholarship, and shows how personal memory can illuminate broader processes of cultural and economic change.

Keywords: Male fashion models, Korean fashion history, 1970s South Korea, Aging, Professional identity

How to Cite:

Choi, S. & Ha, J., (2025) “Remembering the Unseen: Memory and Life Histories of Male Fashion Models in 1970s South Korea”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 82(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.21812