Disneyland Public Affairs: Many cast members’ creative minds and hearts go into the creation of the celebrations for Lunar New Year at Disneyland Resort. One of those cast members in particular is Grace Kang, an associate costume designer with Disney Live Entertainment, who helped create the new Korean hanboks for Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse.
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Grace Kang, who helped design hanboks for Disneyland’s Lunar New Year celebration, had an extremely difficult job. Hanboks have a very specific shape; they’re extremely angular with tightly gathered skirts that fit loosely around the waist. They’re traditionally made of stiff, starchy fabric that gives the garment body and hold its shape extremely well. Working with this type of fabric is difficult enough on humans, so I imagine it must have been quite the challenge for Kang to fit a hanbok onto the body of a mascot! Looking at the costumes pictured in the article, it’s amazing how well she was able to capture the spirit of a hanbok while managing to make it fit so naturally onto unrealistic proportions. Even the details, like Minnie’s Lunar New Year-inspired bow and traditional Korean shoes, have been executed perfectly. I wonder how many revisions it took before the pattern was successfully drafted. Great work here!
Reading about Grace Kang’s journey in designing Mickey and Minnie’s hanboks for Disneyland’s Lunar New Year celebration was really inspiring. It’s not just about creating costumes—it’s about representation, heritage, and storytelling. What makes this story so special is how personal it is for Grace. Through this project, she didn’t just design beautiful outfits; she reconnected with her Korean roots in a way that felt deeply meaningful. I really resonated with her experience of growing up curious about her cultural background but not fully immersed in it. It’s something a lot of people with immigrant parents can relate to—the feeling of being connected yet distant from your heritage. The fact that this project helped her bridge that gap and find a deeper appreciation for her traditions is so powerful. I also loved the broader message of how Disneyland’s Lunar New Year celebration is embracing multiple cultures, from Vietnamese Ao Dai to Chinese Hanfu. It’s so important to see these traditions highlighted in mainstream spaces, especially in ways that are thoughtful and respectful.
This article, I think really represents how much love and care someone puts into their work, especially their art. But also how much of your culture and your upbringing you bring to your life and what you do in your life I think how Grace King designed these amazing handboks for Minnie and Mickey shows how much effort and time something like this takes to plan to organize and to implement into Disneyland, I do wish that it wasn’t just in Disneyland and in all Disney parks just so more people are exposed to this fantastic art and exposed to more cultures. I think that one thing I’ve always appreciated and loved about Disney is that you experience so many different cultures and countries when you’re just in an amusement park. I think with this initiative, they can implement so many more cultures and experiences for people who go to their parks and may not have ever experienced these cultures firsthand and now have a chance to do so.
This was a very thoughtful and respectful way of showing what cultural appreciation can look like. It reminds me of a scenario my AREPT professor told us, that somebody once compiled an extensive list of hundreds of small business in NYC which sell authentic African textiles and weaves. I love this example because it's what DEI should do- uplift and highlight people who would otherwise get swept under the rug, and also helps to support them financially. We all need to survive out there! The work and care put into these costumes was very beautiful and touching and reminds me of how interested I was in other cultures as a child. I thought it was so cool that other countries live totally differently than us, but still so similar. I loved learning about different places and different cultural practices, so I hope these costumes can help inspire that in the kids that attend this cultural celebration.
I absolutely love watching Disney documentaries about how they put up and develop all these different holiday decorations in months, even nights, and this piece does such a great job of showing the true heart and detail behind all of these Lunar New Year costumes. Grace Kang is truly such a talented human being. Her work on Mickey and Minnie’s hanboks is especially impressive because it helped to further connect with her heritage. You can see she put in a ton of research, talking to hanbok makers in Koreatown and making sure the fabrics and silhouettes were accurate. Something that stands out to me is how these designs go beyond just looking good. It's the small details, like the floral pattern on Minnie’s skirt, that just continue to tell that story and add this sense of depth while staying true to Korean tradition. It’s also great that Grace gets to share this moment with her family, especially since they haven’t always seen her work in person. The whole Lunar New Year celebration at Disneyland does a great job of showcasing different Asian traditions!
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