In this paper, we examine the transformation of women’s fashion in 1970s and 80s South Korea by analyzing the images and narratives of unisex clothing in print media. During the industrialization, modernization, and Westernization of South Korean society in the postwar period, women’s fashion underwent tremendous change. Korean society witnessed women’s daily clothes shifting from traditional hanbok 韓服 to simplified Western clothes (kansobok 簡素服) to unisex/androgynous styles. Fashion items such as pantalons, jeans, shirts, tailored jackets and suits, casual office wear, and neckties, conventionally identified as men’s wear, became wardrobe choices for women. One explanation for this is that these changes took place as a result of the influence of South Korean state policy and the national reconstruction movement to simplify women’s dress codes for the sake of economization. However, a closer investigation of the narratives of unisex clothing reveals the impact of feminist movements, a robust youth culture, and young women’s own desire to achieve gender equality and active social participation. Women’s choice of unisex styles came to be viewed as “the era of de-feminized culture: shock of daughters” (t’al yǒsǒng munhwa sidae: ttaltŭl ŭi ch’unggyŏk). There was increased social pressure to reinforce the existing gender-binary system in the face of gender-blurring styles or what was seen as the masculinization of women. Women’s cultural expressions of power, freedom, consumer choices, and modernity, nonetheless, became manifested through their fashion choices. By shedding light on the emergence of unisex clothing in South Korean modernity, this study ultimately seeks to undermine our view of the West as the epicenter of fashion and beauty and urges us to imagine alternative histories and spaces of fashion and bodily aesthetics.
목차
Abstract Introduction: A “Handsome” Woman? Women’s Fashion Transformation in South Korean Modernity: From Hanbok to Unisex Clothing “Shock of Daughters”: Decoding Unisex Style in the 1970s Fashioning “Power Suits”: From Unisex to Androgynous in the 1980s Conclusion References
한국연구원은 1970년 5월 한국 민속의 각 분야에 걸친 자료의 수집과 학술적 연구를 목적으로 '한국민속연구소'로 출발하였다. 그 후 1973년 5월 연구 분야를 확대하며 민속뿐만 아니라 한국학 전반에 걸친 연구를 위해 '한국학연구소'로 개편하였고, 다시 1989년 3월 한국의 국제적 위상의 부상과 함께 한국학 연구의 중요성이 높아짐에 따라 '한국학연구원'으로 확대, 개편하였다. 한국학연구원은 한국학 전반에 걸친 연구를 통해 지역과 민족문화 발전에 기여하며 한국학의 세계화를 위해서 학술활동을 강화하고 나아가 내·외국인에 대한 한국문화 교육을 담당하고자 한다.