Modification in Commodification: Aesthetics of Contemporising Traditional Philippine Weaving for the Market

This study explores the transformation of traditional Philippine weaving as it found its way to its pertinence in the contemporary period through clothing businesses and social enterprises. The paper argues that these enterprises produce distinct modes of contemporisation by negotiating tensions between cultural integrity, aesthetic innovation, and market demands in different ways. Focusing on five social enterprises: (1) Balik Batik, (2) Hanap Habi, (3) Style Isle, (4) Monica Madrigal’s brand, and (5) Creative Definitions, the study aims to conduct a comparative analysis of how specific aesthetic strategies emerge across varying cases. These include the modification of colour palettes to align with branding and consumer recognition, the simplification of patterns to enable scalability and production efficiency, and the transfer of motifs across regional traditions, which reconfigures the meanings attached to textile identities. The study uses three complementary frameworks: Formalist Analysis to examine visual and material transformations, Culture Industry to situate processes of commodification, standardisation, and branding, and Social Aesthetics to assess the relationships among the weavers, the entrepreneurs, and the consumers. Through these lenses, the study demonstrates that while commodification encourages new forms of visibility and livelihood, it also risks collapsing distinct textile traditions into broadly marketable forms. By highlighting these tensions, the study places contemporisation as a contested field in which aesthetic form, cultural meaning, and economic demands are continuously negotiated.