Abstract

The prevalence of multiculturalism in today’s world has necessitated an understanding of how individuals undergo the acculturation process with regard to material culture, namely dress. It is important to consider how design can support the acculturation process because dress products informed by culture can provide support for acculturating individuals. The complex negotiation of cultural features can be navigated with the use of a design model. The authors used Lin’s Cultural Product Design Model and Mullet and Park’s Cross-Cultural Design Framework for Apparel Design as a foundation for the development of a new design model: The Reflective Pyramid Process (RPP) Model of Cross-Cultural Dress Design. The RPP Model is applied to the re-design of an Armenian-American wedding headdress in a case study. The case study results revealed that the RPP Model made improvements to existing cross-cultural product design models and contained limitations that could be resolved with further testing.