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COMMENTARY

There’s a reason examples of 15th-century clothing look so fascinating in “Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway,” at the George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum. The elegantly tailored and gold-embellished outfits are actually costumes from the 2011 South Korean TV series The Princess’s Man, a period romance that took some liberties with traditional Korean clothing. The actual historical items on display are more subtle, but no less interesting.

Those questionably accurate representations aside, “Korean Fashion” covers just over a century of the nation’s clothing. The oldest items are royal and aristocratic clothing that was exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. (Like many objects displayed at that event, they later entered the collection of the institution that became the Field Museum.) It was the first time that Korea, known from 1392 to 1897 as the “hermit kingdom,” participated at a world fair.

At that time, Korea supported the strict qualities of Neo-Confucianism, so extravagant clothing and self-expressive fashion were not acceptable. Korean clothing, known as hanbok, indicated social status, but did so discreetly. Colors were muted and ornamentation was sparse. Prominent people were distinguished by the luxurious quality and elegant details of their hand-woven and fitted garments.

Although Korea is culturally very close to neighboring China and Japan, the hanbok is unique. His signature items include flared skirts, black piped hats and women’s jackets cut so high that they have little more than sleeves. Of the 19th-century clothing in this selection, the pieces that look most like the clothing of Korea’s neighbors are ornate wedding dresses embroidered with floral images.

If the 1893 exhibition was the first time Korea showed the hanbok to the world, it was also a last stand for the country’s traditional clothing. In 1895, the country’s officials switched to Western dress, and the hanbok became reserved for special occasions, as the show’s curator, Lee Talbot, notes. (A more drastic change came in 1905, when Korea began the transition to a colony of Imperial Japan, which imposed its culture and language.)

The top floor of this two-story exhibition is dedicated to the modern era, notable for hallyu, the “Korean wave” of entertainment and fashion that grew beyond South Korea’s borders. Two video screens document the latest K-pop performers and today’s youth streetwear, respectively, while a third offers a brief history of South Korean fashion from the end of the Korean War to the 1990s. This includes photos of an official police crackdown on long hair for men and short skirts for women during the 1970s.

Among the latest items are 1980s hanbok-style shoes for children – made in bright hues because such colors are supposed to protect children from evil – and contemporary hanbok-inspired school uniforms. There’s a quilted jacket designed by Julie Lee, an American woman who in 1959 married one of Korea’s last crown princes, and sleek dresses by Nora Noh, South Korea’s first major female designer. after the war.

Another dress on display was conceived in the 1990s by the designer known as Icinoo (a phonetic contraction of Lee Shin-woo), one of the first South Koreans to present a collection in Paris. It is traditional not in outline, but in material: hanji, or handmade Korean paper.

Also on display are examples of bojagi, which is made of fabric decorated with colors but not meant to be worn. The ornate wrapping cloths, which have been produced in Korea for at least 600 years, are used for wrapping gifts and for other ritual purposes. The show includes several examples of updated bojagis of late, as well as a bojagi-inspired dress created in 2016 by German designer Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s longtime creative director. This gorgeous dress represents Korea’s long journey from a hermit kingdom to global fashion trendsetters.