Dress For Wedding | 日記 | Korean fashion to gets its close-up at Asian Art Museum

Korean fashion to gets its close-up at Asian Art Museum
For over two decades, a new Korean Wave has been sweeping the West as South Korea’s popular music (K-pop), cuisine and cult skin-care products spread via the Internet and social media. But for all the rich culture being exported, traditional Korean dress has remained relatively unexplored.
That’s about to change with the Asian Art Museum’s “Couture Korea,” the first exhibition of its kind in the United States, on display Nov. 3-Feb. 4, 2018.
The exhibition examines how historic and contemporary Korean styles and traditions have informed fashion in Korea, and beyond. Co-presented by the Arumjigi Culture Keepers Foundation in Seoul, it will feature over 120 works that range from re-creations of Joseon Dynasty garments and authentic artifacts from the museum’s collection to 20th and 21st century fashion from Korea and Europe.
For Hyonjeon Kim Han, the museum’s associate curator of Korean art, the real signature of Korean fashion isn’t any one particular technique or garment: It’s the overall sense of subtlety and restraint that distinguishes it from other cultures’ traditions of dress.
“It’s not an aesthetic that is about opulence or overt display in the way it’s presented,” says Han. “There’s a simplicity, but also important symbolism to the pieces and to each layer that’s worn traditionally. That continues to be true today.”
The exhibition will be presented in three galleries divided chronologically as well as thematically. Han says the galleries were designed to offer museum-goers a progressive experience where each room builds upon the last, so people “can make the connection from the past to the present in dress.”
Past: ‘What is hanbok?’
The exhibition begins with an exploration of the fashion of the Joseon-dynasty (1392-1897), which was heavily influenced by the Confucian customs and philosophies of Korean society. The first gallery is centered around the hanbok, a traditional Korean ensemble that Han says is “probably the most familiar piece of Korean dress.” For women, hanbok includes a high, full chima (skirt) over a longer jeogori (blouse). For men, the hanbok includes the addition of baji (pants) and an outer po (robe). Most of the garments in the first gallery have been reproduced based on historic relics and representations of fashion in the art of the period, including a re-creation of King Yeongjo’s pre-1740 dopo (robe) that displays the precision of Joseon construction.
Recently discovered tombs from the era have also yielded new information about what was worn in the most intimate layers.
“There’s no historic record for undergarments,” says Han. “They didn’t get passed down from generation to generation. Now with the excavation of these tombs, we know that for upper-class women there would have been six, seven layers of skirt. For Confucian society it was very important to be buried in your finest pieces, including the undergarments.”
Also on view in the first gallery are the bolder, more colorful celebratory first birthday ensembles upper-class children wore. “The first birthday was very important in a culture where infant mortality was high,” says Han. “To make it to that first birthday was very significant.”
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