[In-Depth Look] Let's Create World-Class Luxury Goods with Our Traditional Handcraft Skills

A few days ago, I met Chairman Jang, the former head of the Custom Tailors Association, who runs a tailor shop at Lotte Hotel in Euljiro. He is truly a living history of Korean bespoke tailoring, being a master tailor in Korea, vice president of the World Tailoring Association, and a judge at skills competitions. He has been making suits for 60 years and is still working today. What saddens him is that the proud bespoke tailoring techniques are fading away with time. His humble wish for young people to learn these skills with pride and carry on the secrets deeply moved me.

In 1967, the news that Korean athletes won gold medals in tailoring and shoemaking at the first WorldSkills Competition brought pride and joy to the people of Korea during a poor and difficult era. There were car parades and presidential rewards, but now the tradition of Korean handcraft skills is disappearing, leaving behind that glory.

The traditional skills of masters are preserved, continuously utilized, and evolve into global luxury brands. Global luxury brands from Italy and France also started from the hands of masters and have come to where they are today. So why have we not created a world-class luxury brand? Even now, the government should step in to identify the current status of these masters and support education for skill transmission and commercialization of products. Masters possess uniquely differentiated secrets that are incomparable. Custom luxury suits are completed through the vertical division of labor between the master tailor’s cutting and the master stitcher’s sewing. If creative designs and new technological concepts from young people willing to learn these master skills are matched here, the chances of success will multiply.

Let’s take bespoke suits as an example again. If the body measurements of Koreans, embedded in the experience of masters, are digitized and standardized, and integrated through a CAD system, this would become the first smart cutting system. If the stitching master’s skills are also digitized and utilized through sewing machine programs, it could ultimately lead to cost reduction in bespoke suits. It could even develop into a system where overseas customers order via smartphones and suits are made contactlessly and exported abroad. If traditional handcraft skills meet young people’s creativity and Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, new competitiveness can be established. If the government takes the lead in transmitting traditional manufacturing skills, adds technological and marketing innovation, and links this to commercialization support, we can expect the achievement of global luxury brands.

The small business craftsmen (small entrepreneurs) skills in tailoring, shoemaking, hanbok, dyeing, embroidery, lacquerware, cloisonn?, woodworking, hanji paper, brassware, and casting that carry our traditional handcraft skills must not disappear. Most masters are in their late 60s to 80s and have retired from active work, and these industries have long been declining. The government and National Assembly must step up. Considering that these are the roots and driving forces for sustainable development of manufacturing industries, a support framework must be established. The WorldSkills gold medalists of glory are suffering from illness. If we miss the time, we will never be able to discover or inherit these masters’ skills and secrets again. There is not much time left.

Kim Ik-seong, Advisor of the Korea Distribution Science Association · Professor at Dongduk Women’s University

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.