Expressing gratitude via the written word: celebrating Chuseok 2023

Every day of the year, Aesop consultants perform gestures of care as a way of expressing gratitude to those who visit our stores—be it offering a cup of tea, having an honest conversation about skin health, or sharing knowledge about our favourite places in the area. Holidays, fetes and festivals afford a heightened opportunity to receive visitors with seasonally inspired shows of thanks.

For Chuseok 2023, Aesop stores across Korea celebrated the Harvest season via a special collaboration with artist Lee Jung Hwa. From 4 September to 1 October, all purchases came with a complimentary Bojagi wrap and a gift card, each featuring a limited-edition print of Hangeul by Lee Jung Hwa.

Depending on the project, Lee Jung Hwa either writes in an entirely traditional style, or a modern reinterpretation of Hangeul lettering—the letters shaped in ways that express the atmosphere of the words, as well as their meaning. Her awareness of life’s transience is rounded with a sense of solace and satisfaction in the beauty we can bring into being while we are alive. ‘Like countless memories that cannot be erased once written, calligraphy remains for a lifetime once it is drawn on paper. Looking at the marked letters, I gain strength and settle my mind.’ Lee Jung Hwa has garnered great attention and respect for mastering this form of art at such a young age, her devotion to the form admired as a preservation of culture as much as it is an artistic practice. Conveying the meaning of Hangeul to the next generation while meditating on what it means to make work that lasts beyond the span of a human life is a great gift to her people.