GWU’s Textile Museum showcases Korean fashion, old and new

Those dubiously accurate get-ups aside, “Korean Fashion” covers a little more than a century of the nation’s apparel. The oldest items are royal and aristocratic garments that were exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. (Like many objects shown at that event, they then 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 in a world’s fair.

At the time, Korea upheld the strict proprieties of neo-Confucianism, so extravagant clothing and self-expressive fashion were not acceptable. Korean clothing, known as hanbok, denoted social status, but did so discreetly. Colors were muted and adornment was rare. More prominent people distinguished themselves with the sumptuous quality and elegant detailing of their hand-woven and hand-assembled attire.

Although Korea is culturally very close to neighboring China and Japan, hanbok is singular. Its distinctive items include billowing skirts, black stovepipe hats and women’s jackets cropped so high that they’re little more than sleeves. Of the 19th-century apparel in this selection, the pieces that look most like the clothing of Korea’s neighbors are ornate bridal robes embroidered with images of flowers.

If the 1893 expo was the first time Korea displayed hanbok to the world, it was also something of a last stand for the nation’s traditional clothing. In 1895, the country’s officials switched to Western garb, and hanbok became reserved for special occasions, as the show’s curator, Lee Talbot, notes. (A more wrenching transition came in 1905, when Korea began the transition into being a colony of imperial Japan, which imposed its culture and language.)

The top floor of this two-story exhibition is devoted to the modern era, notable for hallyu, the “Korean wave” of entertainment and fashion that surged beyond South Korea’s borders. Two video screens document recent K-pop performers and today’s youthful streetwear, respectively, while a third offers a quick-cut 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 more recent objects are 1980s hanbok-style togs for children — made in bright hues, because such colors are supposed to protect kids from evil — and hanbok-inspired contemporary 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 postwar woman designer.

Another dress on display was devised 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’s traditional not in outline but in material: hanji, or handmade Korean paper.

Also on exhibit are examples of bojagi, which is made of colorfully decorated fabric but not meant for wearing. The decorated wrapping cloths, which have been produced in Korea for at least 600 years, are used to package gifts and for various other ritual purposes. The show includes some examples of updated recent bojagi, as well as a bojagi-inspired dress crafted in 2016 by the German designer Karl Lagerfeld, longtime creative director of Chanel. That striking gown represents Korea’s long journey from hermit kingdom to global fashion trendsetter.

Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway

George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum, 701 21st St. NW. museum.gwu.edu.