Abstract
Che Guevara spearheading the Cuban Revolution was not only the icon as the revolutionary to the New-leftists of the 1960s advocating the ideology of Marxism but, as the cultural revolutionary, had a tremendous influence on the younger generation living in the digital age Che Guevara take on a figure of both the symbol of the Leftist but the romantic revolutionary because he had the external features such as black beret, red stars, military upper jackets and trousers, beard and pipe tobacco. In fact, the symbolic image of Che Guevara was made as the popular image by the avantgarde artists and political vanguard forces of the times under the necessity of Cuban government. Afterwards, the image of Che Guevara has been patronized in making people of aware of the resistant and revolutionary image to capital, power and the power of the media and symbolized as the resistant image to the American capital as well as the revolutionary guerrilla. And his image has continued to be reproduced and symbolized for the commercial and political purposes and as the enthusiastic image of youth culture. This can be seen as having been created as a new image by the popular culture formed by the development of the cyber culture and mass media in the cyberspace shaped by contemporary 'N' generations. The use of Che Guevara's symbolic image was made in the fashion field as well as in the cultural and artistic circles. The borrowing of the icon of Che Guevara represented in a fashion field is attributed to his free spirit, and it can be seen that fashion exists as the vehicle for representing both the symbol system and the sign system containing ideologies and texts as the communicator of resistance to the regime and to social issues. Therefore, this study attempted to investigate the commercial iconization of Che Guevara in the 1990s by comparing the ideology of the symbol in the 1960s and the 1990s and inquire into the borrowing of his image by the fashion domain as well as the fashion worn by him by reference to domestic books and materials on the fashion site. Thereby, this study attempted to make clear that the borrowing of Che Guevara in the realm of fashion since the 1990s not only contained the meaningful interpretation as the symbolic code in the culture of young people living in a digital era but fashion performs an intervening role in the cultural phenomenon.