Lee Geon-man

Korean designer Lee Geon-man dreams of bringing his brand up to par with world-class luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermes. It has been 10 years since Lee began to make products with designs taken from Hangeul.

Starting with printing patterns he developed on textile, Lee has been producing fashion accessories like neckties, wallets and bags. Originally, Lee was a fine artist who taught students at university and held numerous exhibitions of his work, but he became widely known with his Hangeul designs. "Nothing in my life went as planned," he says.

Why has he stuck to using the Korean alphabet for his designs? "I wanted to create a culture as well as a brand, something that contains history and a story," he says. "You can't just create a premium brand by investing a lot of money and selling a lot. It is created when something with history and a story produces a new culture adapted to modern lives. Chanel was not made in a day. Chanel has made history over a century. When Coco Chanel showcased a shoulder bag, she made a narrative that a shoulder bag freed the hands of women. Louis Vuitton and Hermes also have these symbolic stories to tell. Hangeul is something that already has a lot of stories and history as it has been with us for over 500 years."

But by itself, Hangeul lacks competitiveness. "Hangeul is unique in that it makes each letter by combining consonant and vowel characters, unlike the Latin alphabet, where you simply line up the letters to create words," Lee says. "To westerners, it can be interesting because it's unfamiliar, but it may end up as a mere curiosity. You can draw attention once or twice, but that isn't enough to be recognized as a premium brand. It's not too late to make history and stories out of Hangeul design."

In September, Lee's products started to be sold in Daikanyama in Tokyo, home of the world's largest market for luxury items. Lee chose Japan, not the United States or Europe, as the first foreign market because he wanted to compete with the big names in the biggest market. But there is another reason. "It feels good to sell items with Hangeul design in a country that banned the use of our own language 70 to 80 years ago."