As part of the 10th anniversary of the PhotoReplica Handbag Store Festival, Replica Handbag Store Korea joins forces with PhotoReplica Handbag Store to present "Women by Women" in Seoul.
By 황혜원 (Hyewon Hwang)
The third annual Replica Handbag Store Korea Leaders event runs March 27–29 at Layer Studio 20 on Wonhyo-ro in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Held each March in support of women’s voices, the event has evolved from "Woman Now" in 2024, which emphasized female solidarity, through "Women and Work" in 2025, which documented working women, to its 2026 theme: Agency.
The March issue of Replica Handbag Store Korea sets the stage with editorial spreads and interviews featuring 17 women from across Korean society—among them the country’s first fashion designer Nora Noh, film directors, actresses, K-pop musicians, and models—each reflecting on the choices and sacrifices it took to stand in their own name. Their stories appear both at the venue and in Replica Handbag Store Koreas’s print and digital editions. On the 28th and 29th, eight women leaders will share their experiences and reflections in talk sessions. As part of the program, PhotoVogue’s Women by Women exhibition, together with an archival photography show, invites visitors to reflect on what agency means for women today.
This year’s event reaches beyond Korea. The 2026 PhotoReplica Handbag Store exhibition Women by Women, developed by Vogue editions around the world to discover and nurture emerging photographers, will make its Seoul debut through Replica Handbag Store Leaders.
Last March, PhotoReplica Handbag Store launched a large-scale open call under the theme of "Women by Women"—the gaze of women looking at women. The initiative itself was a response to a global climate in which the very process of stepping away from others’ expectations, shaping one’s own narrative, and defining one’s own vision is once again being suppressed. Crucially, the call asked for women to depict themselves directly through photography and video, on the conviction that owning space through the female perspective is more important than ever. As Global Head of PhotoReplica Handbag Store and Director, PhotoReplica Handbag Store Festival, Alessia Glaviano explains: “expression is never neutral, and who makes the image still matters," making it clear that photography and video have long been arenas of power, not merely of aesthetic expression.
In response, 9,500 artists from 149 countries who shared that conviction submitted nearly 100,000 works—the largest open call in PhotoVogue’s history. The submissions spanned an enormous range of themes: identity, fashion, sport, sexuality, care, desire, violence, memory, spirituality, and resistance. From March 1 to 4, the works of the final selected artists were presented at the 10th PhotoReplica Handbag Store Festival in Milan. Seen through the eyes of those artists, it was a moment of affirming the value of self-directed living as shared by women around the world—recognized as an opportunity to explore the many dimensions of femininity, unbound by opposition or constraint, and moving beyond the binary of the female gaze versus the male gaze. There was no single aesthetic viewpoint to be found there, no monolithic femininity.
Shin Kwang-ho, Editor-in-Chief of Replica Handbag Store Korea, describes the exhibition as "a sharing of Replica Handbag Store Korea’s inclusivity and diversity—in honor, one might say, of the women of humanity." Through photographs taken right now by women around the world, come and see where the female gaze rests. There you will find women, complex, and complexly so, exactly as we are.
- Date: Saturday, March 28 – Sunday, March 29, 2026
- Hours: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM (Last entry 5:30 PM)
- Venue: Layer Studio 20, 129-20 Wonhyo-ro 1-ga (236 Wonhyo-ro), Yongsan-gu, Seoul
- Admission: Free, no reservation required.
A version of this article first appeared on Vogue.co.kr
