Wearing a hanbok, I didn’t always feel the weight of its 2,000 years of history. In elementary school, I would sport the Korean national costume to show-and-tell and peel off the novelty in time for recess. In high school, I wore it once, to a Korean-American cultural festival, very pleased to have flouted my mother’s request for a historically accurate bun. But 20 years later and with a wedding to plan, I found myself in the Seoul atelier of premier classical hanbok designer Hyesoon Kim, whose expertise has brought the art of hanbok in view of a U.S. president, film audiences, and fashion houses like Fendi and Dries Van Noten. That afternoon her assistants shuffled around the light-filled showroom, hoisting layers of silk hanbok over my head, a wedding gift from my fiance’s family. As Kim herself scrutinized each tie and adjusted my jeogori (top jacket), I wondered about the gold symbols on my chima (skirt) and the phoenix on my chest. This time, I felt the overwhelming tug of heritage, the kind that makes you revisit old, forgotten textbooks and keeps you reading about your ancestors late into the night.
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“Shoulders down; it’s more elegant and the correct posture for hanbok,” I remember the designer advising, patting my shoulder blades into place as a ballet instructor might give corrections to a pupil at the barre. Sure enough, the cloth sat most neatly with a long neck and more comfortably with arms close to the torso. Hanbok anatomy is precise, she continued: the bow points left; norigae (decorative pendants) hang low and behind; negative spaces add dimension.
The dangui, as this style of hanbok was called—one of two traditional gowns I would wear on my wedding day—was once a dress reserved for Joseon Dynasty queens, princesses, and high-ranking female courtiers for minor palace ceremonies. The phoenix on the dangui jacket and skirt, I learned, stood for rebirth and immortality, insignia exclusive to female monarchs of the Joseon court.
Korean monarchies are rarely found on your average high school syllabus in suburban America, and they weren’t on mine. At best, as a kid, I could fire off a few facts about King Sejong, the revered inventor of the Korean alphabet, and a linguistics genius, as my parents liked to point out. The other approximately 190 kings (and a few queens) between the Three Kingdoms Period in 57 B.C. and the final chapters of the Joseon in 1910, remained untouched while I busied myself with AP European History; Regency Period films, preferably starring Colin Firth; and even an ill-advised wait in freezing rain to see Kate Middleton and Prince William turn and wave in New York City.
The origins of hanbok can be traced back to the first century B.C., about the same time Julius Caesar was making a go of things in Rome, and nearly a thousand years before the first king of England took power. My dangui hanbok would have appeared several dynasties later, in the Joseon era, which favored rigid Neo-Confucian hierarchies and the demotion of women, though there was this little marvel: 100 days of maternity leave (later expanded to 30 days before birth), an employee benefit courtesy of King Sejong’s administration in the year 1426. Eight years later, around the time Joan of Arc led the French army at Orléans, husbands were also granted 30 days of paternity leave.
Progressivism, as we know, isn’t always linear. Korea’s first female sovereign, Queen Seondeok, reigned in the Silla Dynasty, more than 700 years before Joseon’s subjugation of women. After Silla, the Goryeo Dynasty saw women being allowed to inherit property and remarry after being widowed, and bridegrooms usually moved in with the family of the bride. It was also during this period, I learned, that the opulent palace wedding hwarot—an outfit popular today in traditional Korean wedding ceremonies—rose to significance. Known for its beams of vivid red, blue, and yellow, the gown’s vast painterly embroidery was cultivated in royal workshops. Contemporary high-fashion houses like Dior and Hermès often measure a garment’s value in hours of labor: An entire hwarot ensemble with its undergarments, robes, headpieces, and precious-stone adornments could involve thousands of hours of craftsmanship; a masterpiece haute couture collection, but in 11th-century Korea.
It’s not a struggle to feel the historical significance of the hwarot, which I also wore on my wedding day. In my case, my mother-in-law entrusted me with hers, an exquisite hand-embroidered creation commissioned after her own engagement. Long, ecclesiastical sleeves draped over my hands, signaling virtue, pageantry, and a sense of occasion. The heaviness of the floral embroidery and abundance of silk made movement slow and deliberate—ideal for, say, sitting still in a Joseon courtyard. For me it meant fully absorbing the sights and sensations down the aisle; I couldn’t walk it faster if I wanted to. My hair was tied up in the classical way (middle-part and low chignon). A yong-jam hairpin made of pure gold ran through my bun, our wedding planner keeping a close eye to ensure the family heirloom safely made it back to its home in a bank vault. Nearly a decade later, our wedding guests recall the Korean rituals with particular sharpness.
In the first fitting for my dangui, before I was able to name any medieval Korean kingdom, I contemplated what the phoenix resting on my chest represented. I owe that initial curiosity in part to the scholarly intensity of designer Hyesoon Kim, whose painstaking work has preserved an ancient geopolitical art form. Then there was my mother-in-law’s stewardship of family legacy, and even my mother’s early attempts to introduce tradition in my modern American life. I think about these tiny transfers of civilization often as I consider my own approach to motherhood. It reminds me why we tell tales that begin with “once upon a time”—how we find meaning in stories that stretch across eras and oceans. For my little daughter, who recently wore her first hanbok and will inherit mine, I hope the land it speaks of will not seem so far away.
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