Gawon

Reveal, then a first fashion week

Xportsnews reported on 24 August 2024 that THEBLACKLABEL had posted a teaser and trailer for Gawon, the second member of MEOVV, on its official social media channels the day before. Her connection with Sooin goes back further: in a W Korea interview published on 20 April 2026, Gawon said the two first met in middle school.

In February 2025, five months after the debut, Gawon attended Prada’s Fall/Winter 2025 women’s collection show in Milan, Italy. Prada announced on 17 April that it had chosen Gawon as a brand ambassador, and the reaction Marie Claire Korea carried from her was: “I’m truly honoured and excited to join Prada as an ambassador!” A year later she told W Korea, “I feel very grateful that I received Prada’s attention and affection even before my debut.”

Harper’s BAZAAR Korea released on 27 March 2026 the April-issue pictorial Gawon shot with Sandro in Paris. On 1 July, Aveda named Gawon a brand ambassador and released the ‘SHINE LIKE AVEDA’ campaign pictorial it had planned with Vogue (Sisun News).

Writing lyrics, directing a title track

In the credits THEBLACKLABEL gives in its album introductions, Gawon is listed as a lyricist from the second single, ‘TOXIC’, onward. On the first mini album, MY EYES OPEN VVIDE, she co-wrote the lyrics of the title track ‘DROP TOP’ and of ‘LIT RIGHT NOW’, and she did so again on the single ‘BURNING UP’; on the second mini album, BITE NOW, her name is on four of the five songs: ‘DDI RO RI’, ‘In my hands’, ‘Favorite song’ and ‘Revenge’.

Reporting on the showcase held on 1 June 2026, the day BITE NOW came out, Ilgan Sports wrote that Gawon had directed the title track. “Producer Teddy told the five of us to try directing one another, so I took up the challenge,” she said. In an April interview ahead of the release she said of the work, “This time all five of us took part more, and more deeply, than ever before”, and at the showcase she introduced a nickname the members had coined for themselves, ‘Meovv-chelin’ (미야오 슐랭): “We want to describe ourselves this way as artists who make not only the music and the performance but the stage itself delicious, with quality” (Star News).

She also reworked the arrangements for the stage. Of MEOVV’s opening performance at the Korea Grand Music Awards (KGMA) in November 2025, Gawon told Ilgan Sports, “It was a stage where we threw in every new attempt: for the first time we made big changes to our songs, rearranged them, added ad-libs and even changed the dance-break choreography.”

Music you can hold

Her connection with LPs began while she was preparing to debut. Gawon told W Korea that the words “EP” and “LP” confused her, that she looked them up and so came to know LPs, and that she was drawn to owning the music she loved in a form she could touch. Searching out Korean city pop of the 1980s and 1990s, she came across ‘샴푸의 요정’ (Shampoo-ui Yojeong) by the band 빛과 소금 (Bitgwa Sogeum) through a streaming recommendation, and later met the album again in a record shop.