Nora Noh

Nora Noh is 84 and she is still wearing false eyelashes. The first fashion designer in South Korea and the undisputed Coco Chanel of South Korean fashion has been at the top of her game for 60 years. Her lifetime has coincided with sweeping westernization of South Korean culture and the emancipation of the country’s women. She even owes her first name to Nora, the headstrong heroine of the Norwegian play . Noh has also garnered international acclaim, and her elegant creations have graced the covers of and . So the time is ripe for a retrospective, and how could it take any other form than a fashion show? Assisted by the passionate young stylist Seu Eun-young, Noh starts preparing, but the collaboration doesn’t go very smoothly to say the least. Fluidly edited pieces of archive footage from South Korea of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are intercut with interviews with former customers, film stars and fashion experts talking about what Noh’s clothing meant to them. Noh has always designed expressly for working women. “Her clothes felt comfortable and liberating,” explains one of her admirers. Noh herself speaks in voice-over about her failed teenage marriage and the long career that followed. Reconstructions of key scenes from Noh’s life reveal an independent spirit that was unusual for the time. Meanwhile, the day of the show is fast approaching.