Cultural Reinvention for Traditional Korean Bojagi

This article introduces the idea of cultural reinvention for cultural textile products. Fundamentally, the term ‘cultural products’ consists of culture and product. Culture means a symbol of a particular time and society. Cultural products can be thought of as artefacts produced by and for a specific cultural group. However, commercial needs and desires may and often do mean that although the form and style of the artefact may remain, it can be produced by other cultural groupings. This article builds an understanding of the term cultural reinvention through the historical and modern consideration of tartan as a case study. It then provides a taxonomy of traditional and cultural Korean textiles and identifies possible strategies for the cultural and commercial reinvention of bojagi textiles. A website has been developed as a design marketing tool to allow consumers to learn about and create their own bojagi designs. This website has been evaluated by five focus groups.