As a kid, when Estella Park Riahi did poorly on a test, her mother had a favorite way of threatening her. “She’d tell me: ‘You’re going to have to work for the family business!’” said Riahi. “That used to scare me.”
Back then, making and selling hanbok – traditional Korean garments – alongside her immigrant mother, Laura Park, in Los Angeles’s Koreatown was the last thing Riahi wanted to do. “I attended a predominantly white all-girls school, and I wanted to fit in with everybody whose parents had ‘normal’ careers,” she said. “I had no interest in celebrating my Koreanness.”
Little would Riahi have guessed that today, at age 33, she would be working for her family’s hanbok business on the side of her full-time job as an attorney – and completely by choice. Over the last decade, she’s helped guide the transformation of Leehwa Wedding & Hanbok from a shop catering primarily to local Koreans preparing for their weddings to an established brand attracting customers from across the country, dressing for a variety of occasions. Clients have worn Leehwa designs to the Oscars and Emmys and, last spring, the entire San Diego Padres baseball team donned custom Leehwa hanbok to mark their first-ever game in Seoul, South Korea.
The family tradition of hanbok-making goes back five generations. “It was a trade passed down from woman to woman,” said Park, age 60, who immigrated to the US in the 1980s and opened her studio in 1993. (She designs all the clothing and still does the bulk of the sewing.) As a young working mother, Park often brought Riahi and her brother to the studio, where they would entertain themselves playing with scraps of fabric. “Estella saw how hard my life was,” said Park. “I wanted more for her.”
Riahi hoped to land a corporate job after graduating from UC San Diego in 2013. “My mom said, ‘Why don’t you work with me until you find something?’” said Riahi. That temporary stint turned into eight years working full-time with her mother, during which time she helped triple the studio’s revenue. Riahi created Leehwa’s social media accounts, launched its online commerce and encouraged her mother to diversify beyond her custom special occasion creations to create a line of Korean-inspired streetwear, which they call House of Leehwa.
According to data from the US Census Bureau, more than 1.8 million Korean Americans were living in the United States in 2022, an increase of over 125% since 1990. In the past several years, Korean culture – from K-pop to K-dramas to K-beauty – has found popularity across the world. “Ten years ago, my customers all had Korean last names,” marvels Park. “Now I have many customers who are not Korean coming to my store.”
Riahi started law school in 2021. She now lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she works as an intellectual property associate at a law firm, but continues to support the family business in her spare time, assisting with strategy, marketing and communications. “Sharing my Korean culture through our family business has still been the most meaningful work I’ve ever done,” she said.
The two of you not only worked together, but you lived together under the same roof for eight years. Were there conflicts?
Park: Yes, we had fights because I’m always thinking about my business 24 hours a day. This is the way of the first generation. On many nights after coming home, I would tell Estella, “Come here! Let’s work on this, let’s do this right now.” But Estella would be upset and say she wanted a rest, she wanted to be free from work.
Riahi: There were nights when I would be crying and my mom would be screaming because I’d be exhausted and she would inevitably want to keep talking about work. I think that if you are going to go into business with a family member and especially if you’re going to live together, it is very important to set boundaries. We had to learn to do that.
What are some ways you’ve grown the business?
Park: I wanted to understand American-style draping and patterns so I took classes at FIDM [Fashion Institute of Design & Manufacturing] to learn how to design in the American style. I was 20 years older than the other students but I loved it! With that knowledge I began to combine American techniques with Korean fabrics and other traditional elements to create the more modern style of hanbok that I make today, which I call a fusion-style hanbok. They are not as poofy as traditional hanbok and they show the female shape.
Riahi: I took classes too – I earned a UCLA extension business certificate, which involved a year of evening classes. The most helpful course was probably on drawing up a business plan.
Now that Estella is working remotely, how has it affected the business?
Park: It was very hard at first. We had to change the store hours to appointment-only because I could not handle it by myself. And anything involving English was so hard for me because Estella was doing all the communications, talking to all the English-speaking customers and answering all the emails.
Riahi: I still call and join Zoom meetings and help answer email. But you know what’s been a game-changer for my mom? ChatGPT! She uses it for everything she needs to write in English and it’s worked so well. She likes to say that ChatGPT is her secretary.
