Creative Design: Professional

Brush to Body: A Hanbok Dialogue

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Abstract

This design project investigates how personal narrative and familial collaboration can serve as generative sources for cultural garment reinterpretation. Specifically, the project explores how traditional Korean dress forms—the Chima (skirt/dress) and Durumagi (overcoat)—can be contemporized through digital textile printing, fine art integration, and layered silhouette construction. The purpose of this work is to examine how emotionally resonant storytelling can be embedded into wearable form, using relational aesthetics as a design methodology. Drawing from Weber and Mitchell’s (2004) theory of clothing as autobiographical narrative, this project positions garments as expressive vessels for memory, identity, and kinship. A gap in current design scholarship exists around how familial creativity—particularly sister-to-sister  ollaborations—can inform cultural dress innovation through digital and analog fusion. By using a watercolor painting by my sister as the central visual motif, the project contributes to emerging conversations around relational design and memory-based making practices.

Keywords: Visual language, personal narrative, water paint

How to Cite:

Gam, H., (2025) “Brush to Body: A Hanbok Dialogue”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 82(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.21928