How to Apply to Gentle Monster (IICOMBINED)

13 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 9 open positions

Key Takeaways

  • Gentle Monster is operated by IICOMBINED Co., Ltd., a Seoul creative house that also owns Tamburins (fragrance) and Nudake (dessert). Hiring goes through the parent company, not the consumer-facing Gentle Monster URL.
  • There is no enterprise ATS. Apply via Saramin for Korean roles, LinkedIn for international roles, or email [email protected] for referrals and senior positions.
  • Portfolio is the application. Resume is secondary. For any creative, 3D, design, VM, or marketing role, your portfolio carries 80 percent of the decision weight.
  • Korean-language capability is the default for Seoul HQ roles. English-first candidates are hired for specific senior creative, technical 3D, and international retail roles, but conversational-level Korean meaningfully helps.
  • Interview process runs 3–5 rounds with a practical creative exercise and typically an on-site at the Seongsu studio. Total timeline runs three to seven weeks for most roles.
  • Compensation competes on prestige and creative freedom, not on cash. Korean creative industry bands apply, with performance bonuses and employee product discounts layered on top.
  • The brand hires for taste, conceptual hold, production craft, and creative resilience. Luxury retail experience helps; editorial, exhibition, and gallery experience often helps more.

About Gentle Monster (IICOMBINED)

Gentle Monster is the flagship brand of IICOMBINED Co., Ltd. (주식회사 아이아이컴바인드), a Seoul-based creative house founded in 2011 by Hankook Kim (김한국). What began as a contrarian eyewear startup — a small Korean team who believed sunglasses could be designed with the same ambition as contemporary art — has become one of the most distinctive fashion houses of the last decade. Today IICOMBINED operates three sibling brands under one roof: Gentle Monster (luxury eyewear and the group's revenue engine), Tamburins (niche fragrance and body care, culturally amplified by its ambassador relationship with Blackpink's Jennie), and Nudake (experimental patisserie and dessert concepts that double as brand world-building). A fourth quieter label, Tapin5, rounds out the portfolio with curated fashion objects. The parent company's public disclosures indicate revenue in the multi-hundred-billion KRW range (reported figures hover around KRW 300–600B depending on year and consolidation scope), and LinkedIn lists roughly 384 associated employees, with total headcount across flagship retail, global offices, and contract creative production sitting in the 400–600 range. IICOMBINED's center of gravity is its Seoul headquarters. The registered corporate address is Seogyo-dong in Mapo-gu (서울특별시 마포구 어울마당로5길 41, 테스트빌딩), while the main creative studios, 3D art department, and brand teams operate from Seongsu-dong, Seoul's design-led neighborhood. The physical geography matters because Gentle Monster is, to an unusual degree, a brand that builds its own sets. Nearly every flagship store — Seoul Haus Dosan, Shanghai HAUS, Chengdu, Beijing, Milan, Paris (rue Saint-Honoré), London (Mayfair), Dover Street Market concessions, Los Angeles (Rodeo Drive and Fairfax), and New York (SoHo and Meatpacking) — is treated as a sculptural installation first and a retail environment second. The kinetic robots, the surreal creatures, the volcanic rooms, the Jennie x Tamburins olfactory labs — these are produced in-house by IICOMBINED's art direction, 3D, mechatronics, and fabrication teams. That production model shapes who gets hired and why. The company competes in the luxury eyewear tier occupied by Oliver Peoples, Jacques Marie Mage, Persol, and the LVMH-owned Thélios portfolio — but with a distinctly Korean creative operating system: faster product cycles, aggressive celebrity and K-pop integrations (Blackpink, NewJeans, BigHit collaborations), and a willingness to spend on retail theater that most European houses reserve for runway. The business expanded physically into the US (flagships in LA, NYC, Miami) and Europe through 2023–2025, with Chinese market strength remaining a significant revenue pillar. For candidates, this means IICOMBINED is hiring across three distinct skill ecosystems: Korean-language creative and corporate roles in Seoul (the majority of postings), Mandarin-capable retail and marketing staff for Greater China, and English-speaking store leadership, VM, and marketing hires in North America and Europe. Each lane has its own rhythm, and the hiring philosophy is unambiguously art-first: the portfolio is the candidacy, the résumé is a footnote.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Primary channel (Korea HQ roles): IICOMBINED posts active openings through Saram

    Primary channel (Korea HQ roles): IICOMBINED posts active openings through Saramin (사람인), Korea's dominant professional job board, under the legal entity name 주식회사 아이아이컴바인드. Most creative, 3D, marketing, merchandising, technical (Unreal Engine, AI Glasses collaboration), and corporate postings route through Saramin with a 'apply via company homepage' redirect back to internal forms. Wanted.kr and Jobplanet mirror many of these postings. Expect 50–80 concurrent listings during active seasons.

  2. 2
    Secondary channel (company site): The corporate site iicombined

    Secondary channel (company site): The corporate site iicombined.com/careers is deliberately minimal — it does not host a live job board. Instead it publishes recruiting notices, the document-return policy required by Korea's Fair Hiring Procedures Act (채용절차의 공정화에 관한 법률, 2020.5.26 시행), and the recruiting contact [email protected]. Candidates typically reach the company via Saramin, LinkedIn, or direct email introduction for senior and international roles.

  3. 3
    International retail and studio roles: Store manager, visual merchandising lead,

    International retail and studio roles: Store manager, visual merchandising lead, buyer, marketing manager, and senior designer roles for flagships in New York, Los Angeles, London, Milan, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, and Singapore are posted on LinkedIn, the GENTLE MONSTER company page, and — for Chinese market roles — Liepin and Zhaopin. These roles are typically English-working for non-Korea markets, but Korean proficiency is a meaningful tiebreaker because creative direction still originates in Seoul.

  4. 4
    Portfolio submission is non-negotiable for design roles: For any role in eyewear

    Portfolio submission is non-negotiable for design roles: For any role in eyewear design, 3D modeling (prop/character/creature), motion graphics, Unreal Engine development, visual merchandising, graphic design, or art direction, a curated portfolio (PDF up to 20MB, or a link to Behance, Are.na, Vimeo, or a personal site) is required at the time of application. The cover email should link to the portfolio directly — attachments over 10MB are often stripped by corporate mail filters. For 3D roles, a short showreel (60–90 seconds, Vimeo unlisted link) outperforms a static PDF.

  5. 5
    Expected timeline: From application to offer, the Korean HQ hiring loop typicall

    Expected timeline: From application to offer, the Korean HQ hiring loop typically runs three to seven weeks. Screening is fast (3–5 business days), but the creative portfolio review and in-person studio visit add time. International retail hiring moves faster (two to four weeks) because regional managers have more autonomy. Senior corporate hires (director level and above) can take eight to twelve weeks, often with a final interview in Seoul.

  6. 6
    Mandatory legal step for rejected candidates: Under Korea's Fair Hiring Procedur

    Mandatory legal step for rejected candidates: Under Korea's Fair Hiring Procedures Act, any candidate who submitted physical documents (not electronic) has 180 days from the final result announcement to request their materials back. IICOMBINED formally honors this by posting the return procedure and PDF/DOCX request form on its careers page. This is pro forma but signals that the company follows Korean employment compliance rigorously — relevant if you are negotiating relocation or visa terms.


Resume Tips for Gentle Monster (IICOMBINED)

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Structure for visual legibility, not ATS parsing

Structure for visual legibility, not ATS parsing. IICOMBINED does not run an enterprise applicant tracking system like Greenhouse or Workday, so keyword-stuffed resumes gain nothing. Hiring managers, especially on creative teams, scan the resume for 90 seconds after the portfolio has already sold them. Use a clean two-column layout with strong typography (Inter, Helvetica Neue, Pretendard, or Apple SD Gothic Neo for Korean) and generous whitespace. One page for under-ten-years experience, two pages for senior roles.

recommended

Submit in Korean for Korea HQ roles; bilingual KR/EN for global or relocating ca

Submit in Korean for Korea HQ roles; bilingual KR/EN for global or relocating candidates. A Korean-language resume (국문 이력서) is expected for all Seoul-based creative, corporate, retail, and studio roles unless the posting explicitly states English is acceptable. For senior international hires or roles that explicitly welcome foreign applicants (often 3D artists, Unreal developers, and AI Glasses technical roles), a bilingual KR/EN resume is the safest format. If you do not write Korean at native proficiency, hire a certified translator — machine-translated Korean is a visible disqualifier.

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Lead with brand-relevant creative context

Lead with brand-relevant creative context. Name-drop the right references. If you have worked with or studied under studios that resonate culturally with Gentle Monster — UNIVERSAL EVERYTHING, Sulki & Min, Studio Fnt, SoftMachine, Onnion, Random Studio, Analogue Life, Tokujin Yoshioka's studio, Thomas Heatherwick Studio, or MAD Architects — surface those affiliations high on the resume. Retail and VM applicants should highlight experience at Dover Street Market, Ssense, 10 Corso Como, Beams, Acne Studios, Hermès, Maison Margiela, or other houses where retail is treated as editorial.

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Quantify cultural impact, not just revenue

Quantify cultural impact, not just revenue. Gentle Monster hires people who move culture. Better resume bullets cite earned press (Hypebeast, Dezeen, W Magazine, 032c, Numéro), social lift from a campaign (organic reach, celebrity repost, completion rate on a launch film), exhibition inclusion, or award recognition (Red Dot, iF Design, D&AD, ADC, One Show). Revenue metrics matter for merchandising and business roles but should not crowd out creative proof.

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For 3D and technical art roles, list your full tool stack explicitly

For 3D and technical art roles, list your full tool stack explicitly. The Seongsu studio runs on Cinema 4D (with Redshift and Octane), Houdini for sim work, Blender, Maya for character pipeline, ZBrush for sculpt, Substance 3D Painter/Designer, Unreal Engine 5, Unity (secondary), Nuke, DaVinci Resolve, and TouchDesigner for interactive installations. Specify which tools you use at production depth versus exposure level — hiring managers can tell the difference within two minutes of portfolio review.

recommended

For retail and VM roles, document the store moment

For retail and VM roles, document the store moment. Include a 'signature installation' or 'signature window' entry that names the store, the season, the concept, the team lead, and one photograph or link. Gentle Monster VM candidates are judged the way fashion editors are — the best example of your work tells the story faster than a list of responsibilities.

recommended

Be explicit about Korean work authorization for non-Korean candidates

Be explicit about Korean work authorization for non-Korean candidates. If you are a non-Korean national applying for a Seoul-based role, state your current visa status (E-7 Special Occupation, D-8 Corporate Investment, F-2 Residency, F-4 Overseas Korean, F-5 Permanent, or 'requires sponsorship') in the contact header. Gentle Monster does sponsor E-7 visas for hard-to-fill creative and technical roles, but hiding visa ambiguity until the offer stage is a common reason offers get rescinded.

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Include social and editorial links with intent

Include social and editorial links with intent. A clean LinkedIn is expected, but Instagram and Behance links are where creative leads actually look. Curate your Instagram grid before applying — a feed that reads as visually coherent communicates more than a portfolio PDF. Do not link a dormant or off-brand personal account.



Interview Culture

The IICOMBINED interview process mirrors the company's creative character: more rigorous than structured, more aesthetic than procedural, and ultimately a test of whether you belong inside the brand's visual world. Candidates should expect three to five rounds, with the exact shape depending on role family. Round one is almost always a recruiter phone screen, conducted in Korean for Seoul roles and in English for international roles. It is relatively short (20–30 minutes) and focuses on work authorization, compensation expectations, notice period, and a fluent summary of your portfolio highlights. This is a gate, not a deep dive — the goal is to confirm basic fit and move you to the hiring manager. Round two is the hiring manager interview, typically 45–60 minutes. For creative roles this is a detailed portfolio walk-through where you are expected to narrate the decisions behind three to five pieces — not just what you built, but why, who you collaborated with, what constraints shaped the output, and what you would change. Interviewers probe for taste and self-editing ability: candidates who over-explain or cannot identify the weakest piece in their own portfolio tend to fall out here. For business and corporate roles, round two is more traditionally structured around past project impact, but still expect questions about aesthetic sensibility and why this brand specifically. Round three, in most creative tracks, is a practical exercise or case study. Examples include: designing a hypothetical flagship window concept for a named city, storyboarding a 30-second Tamburins film, proposing three collection themes for an upcoming season, or producing a short 3D mood film to a provided brief. Turnaround is typically three to seven days. The exercise is unpaid, which is standard for Korean creative hiring but worth noting — senior candidates can negotiate a modest honorarium. Technical 3D and Unreal Engine candidates may instead be given a live asset-review session where they explain and defend a production file. Round four is the on-site at the Seongsu or Seogyo studio — typically a half-day visit that includes meetings with two or three cross-functional leads (creative, brand, merchandising), a walk-through of the current project wall, and often an unstructured coffee session with a founding-era team member. The studio visit is itself an evaluation tool: how you behave in the space, what you notice, what you ask, and how you engage with the kinetic work-in-progress pieces all factor into the decision. For international candidates, this round is conducted in English but visual fluency matters more than verbal polish. The final round, for director-level and senior creative hires, is a meeting with founder and CEO Hankook Kim or one of the senior creative leads. These conversations are short, often under 30 minutes, and deliberately open-ended. Expect questions about what brands you believe are operating at the highest creative level right now, what you think is broken about the current luxury market, and which Gentle Monster store or campaign you would have designed differently. There are no correct answers — the interview is testing whether you think like an operator of this specific brand. Throughout the process, candidates should expect a pace that feels slower than Western tech hiring (two to three weeks between rounds is normal, not a red flag) but with quick, decisive final outcomes once a finalist emerges. Offers are typically delivered verbally first by the recruiter, followed by written terms 3–5 days later. Compensation negotiation is possible but constrained — Korean creative industry salary bands are relatively tight, and Gentle Monster competes on brand prestige and creative freedom more than on base salary. Equity is not offered; performance bonuses and retail employee discounts (typically 40–50% on eyewear, 30% on Tamburins) are standard.

What Gentle Monster (IICOMBINED) Looks For

  • Visual taste you cannot fake. Every successful hire has a demonstrably curated eye — in their portfolio, their own clothing, their Instagram, their references. The company hires for taste the way law firms hire for analytical rigor. If your aesthetic vocabulary cannot hold its own in a room with Rei Kawakubo, Hiroshi Fujiwara, and Virgil Abloh references, the application will struggle.
  • The ability to hold a concept for the full journey. IICOMBINED products are not features — they are complete worlds. A collection, a store, a fragrance, a dessert concept all move through the same conceptual machine. Candidates who can articulate one consistent vision from moodboard to fabrication to campaign are disproportionately hired over specialists who optimize only one stage.
  • Speed and velocity without losing craft. The brand releases multiple collections a year, rotates store installations on aggressive schedules, and launches brand extensions that would take European houses years. Candidates who have shipped fast in demanding creative environments (editorial, high-end commercial, agency work for luxury clients) adapt. Candidates who have only worked on long-cycle in-house programs often struggle.
  • Korean professional fluency for Seoul roles, Mandarin for China roles, editorial-level English for global creative. Communication is evaluated by what can be done in the relevant language, not what is claimed on the resume. Business-level Korean (비즈니스 회화) is expected for Seoul roles; creative roles require the additional ability to discuss abstract concepts fluidly.
  • Cultural sensitivity across K-pop, celebrity, and luxury ecosystems. The Tamburins x Jennie relationship, the Blackpink eyewear moments, and ongoing collaborations with global artists require candidates who understand how to operate inside celebrity partnerships without either fangirling or being dismissive. This is especially true for marketing, PR, and VIP relations roles.
  • Technical production chops on creative teams. Unlike traditional luxury houses that outsource set design and installation, IICOMBINED builds most of its world in-house. The 3D, mechatronics, Unreal Engine, and fabrication teams are sized and skilled more like a VFX house than a retailer. Production-grade craft is a hard requirement, not a nice-to-have.
  • Resilience for a demanding creative environment. Multiple public employee reviews describe the pace as intense, with long cycles around collection launches and store openings. The company rewards contribution visibly but expects high commitment. Candidates looking for predictable hours in a luxury brand are a poor fit; candidates energized by creative scale and ambition thrive.
  • Instinct for retail as theater. Every candidate who will touch a store — VM, sales associate, store manager, designer of in-store objects — is evaluated on whether they treat retail as storytelling. Transactional retail backgrounds are less valuable than exhibition, gallery, or editorial experience for these roles.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to speak Korean to work at Gentle Monster headquarters in Seoul?
For most Seoul-based roles, yes — business-level Korean is expected as the working language. Exceptions exist for senior international creative hires, specialized technical roles (especially in 3D art, Unreal Engine development, and AI eyewear engineering), and roles explicitly flagged as English-working on the posting. Even in those cases, conversational Korean is a meaningful advantage because internal reviews, studio conversations, and creative briefs often happen in Korean first. If you do not speak Korean, focus your application on the international store network (US, UK, France, Italy, Japan, Singapore) or on the Greater China team, where English and Mandarin are the working languages respectively.
Does IICOMBINED sponsor work visas for foreign applicants?
Yes, but selectively. IICOMBINED sponsors Korean E-7 Special Occupation visas for hard-to-fill creative and technical roles — most commonly senior 3D artists, Unreal Engine developers, character designers, and specialized creative directors. The company is less likely to sponsor for roles where a qualified Korean candidate is readily available, such as general marketing, junior design, or retail. Disclose your visa status honestly in your first contact; the recruiting team can assess sponsorship feasibility early and will decline to waste mutual time if sponsorship is not realistic for the specific role.
What is the difference between applying on Saramin and emailing [email protected]?
Saramin is the primary intake channel for all openly advertised Seoul HQ roles and is where the internal recruiting team reviews applications as part of their daily workflow. The direct email address is reserved for referrals, senior or confidential hires, proactive introductions from strong candidates not responding to an open posting, and international roles not otherwise advertised. If a specific role is posted on Saramin, apply there — duplicating via email can be read as circumventing the process. If no posting exists but you have a strong portfolio and a clear role target, the direct email is the correct route.
What kind of portfolio does Gentle Monster expect?
Portfolios should be curated ruthlessly. A strong IICOMBINED portfolio is 8–15 projects for a designer, 5–10 for a senior creative, or a 60–90 second showreel for 3D and motion roles. Each project should show the full arc — concept, references, process, final output — with enough visual density to communicate taste and enough editing to demonstrate judgment. Include one or two collaborative projects where you name the team and credit roles clearly. Submit as a single PDF up to 20MB or as a Vimeo/Behance/Are.na/personal site link. Do not submit Google Drive folders of raw files — recruiters will not browse them.
Is Gentle Monster open to remote or hybrid roles?
No, for almost all creative and corporate roles the expectation is full in-office work at the Seongsu or Seogyo studio. The company's creative model depends on co-location: physical mockups, kinetic prototypes, fabric reviews, and cross-functional design sessions happen in person. A small number of technical roles (certain engineering, data, or content production positions) occasionally offer partial hybrid arrangements, but 'remote-first' is not part of the company culture. International offices and retail roles follow local market norms but are also heavily in-person.
How competitive is the compensation compared to Samsung, LG, or Kakao?
Base salaries at IICOMBINED are lower than what top Korean conglomerates (Samsung Electronics, LG, Kakao, Naver) offer for equivalent experience levels, particularly for business, engineering, and corporate roles. The company competes on creative prestige, brand cachet, and the unusual opportunity to work on culturally visible projects. Performance bonuses, employee product discounts (40–50% on Gentle Monster eyewear, 30% on Tamburins), and career leverage for future moves into luxury, fashion, or creative industries offset the base gap. For creative candidates, the trade is often worth it; for engineering candidates evaluating Kakao or Naver, the cash gap can be significant and worth negotiating hard.
Does Gentle Monster hire for its Shanghai, Beijing, Milan, Paris, London, Tokyo, or New York offices?
Yes. The company operates a network of regional offices and flagship stores across Greater China, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and North America, and each market hires regional VM leads, store managers, sales specialists, marketing managers, and PR leads. Mandarin is required for mainland China roles, Japanese for Tokyo, and native or near-native English for US and UK. Creative direction still flows from Seoul, so international hires partner closely with HQ teams — strong written communication and timezone flexibility are real requirements. These roles are typically posted on LinkedIn, regional job boards (Liepin and Zhaopin for China, Rikunabi and Bizreach for Japan), and occasionally on Business of Fashion Careers.
How does Gentle Monster's hiring process compare to Oliver Peoples, Persol, or Luxottica?
The process is meaningfully different. Luxottica-owned houses (Oliver Peoples, Persol, Ray-Ban, and Ray-Ban Meta) run mature corporate HR operations using enterprise ATS platforms (Workday, SuccessFactors), structured competency interviews, and relatively standardized compensation bands. IICOMBINED runs a founder-led creative hiring model closer to a high-end design studio — more portfolio-weighted, more founder-involved at senior levels, less structured, and with higher variance in outcomes. Candidates coming from a Luxottica or Kering background often find the Gentle Monster process initially opaque but ultimately faster-moving once they are inside the final rounds.
What does the Tamburins x Jennie relationship mean for hiring in marketing and PR?
Tamburins' high-profile ambassador and creative collaboration with Blackpink's Jennie has significantly raised the stakes on the fragrance brand's marketing and celebrity operations teams. The PR, VIP relations, influencer marketing, and brand-side creative direction roles attached to Tamburins now require candidates who are comfortable operating at the intersection of K-pop media cycles, luxury fragrance positioning, and global celebrity partnerships. Prior experience with YG Entertainment, HYBE, SM, Kering, LVMH, or high-end celebrity-led brands is a strong signal. Discretion is mandatory — the hiring process itself is more confidential than for other roles, and leaks to the K-pop press are career-ending.
What are the biggest reasons candidates get rejected?
The most common rejection reasons, based on patterns visible across Korean creative hiring and publicly discussed candidate experiences, are: (1) a generic portfolio that could have been submitted to any luxury brand; (2) over-reliance on resume text over visual portfolio; (3) inability to articulate a clear aesthetic point of view during the portfolio walk-through; (4) cultural mismatch — candidates who treat the brand as just a job rather than a specific creative community; (5) insufficient Korean-language fluency for Seoul HQ roles; (6) hiding visa or work authorization issues until late in the process; and (7) poor taste signals outside the portfolio itself, most commonly a disorganized personal Instagram or LinkedIn that contradicts the curated self presented in application materials.

Open Positions

Gentle Monster (IICOMBINED) currently has 9 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 9 open positions at Gentle Monster (IICOMBINED)

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Sources

  1. IICOMBINED Careers — Official Corporate Recruiting Page
  2. IICOMBINED About — Company Overview, Brand Portfolio (Gentle Monster, Tamburins, Nudake)
  3. Saramin Job Search — 주식회사 아이아이컴바인드 (IICOMBINED Co., Ltd.) Active Postings
  4. GENTLE MONSTER LinkedIn Company Page — Employee Count, About Section, Global Office Presence
  5. Gentle Monster Global Site — Flagship Stores, Brand Heritage, Product Universe
  6. Korea Fair Hiring Procedures Act — 채용절차의 공정화에 관한 법률 (Effective 2020.5.26) — Referenced in IICOMBINED Recruiting Document Return Policy