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| Lee Jin-hee, costume director and CEO of HAMU, poses during an interview with The Korea Times at her office and store in Jongno-gu, Seoul, Dec. 3. She's worked on multiple dramas, films and plays such as TV drama "Love in the Moonlight," and film "The Great Battle" (2018). Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
Award-winning designer Lee Jin-hee talks about experimentalism in hanbok design, sources of inspiration
By Park Ji-won
"Women in Goguryeo ran like squirrels."
A portrait of Korean women of the ancient kingdom, which had once occupied the spacious territory stretching from current North Korea to northeastern China, sparked the imagination of costume designer Lee Jin-hee.
"What kind of women would they have been?" she wondered during a Korea Times interview at her office in Seoul, Thursday. "The natural surroundings of Goguryeo were notoriously unsuitable for human living conditions. Its mountains were high, its slopes were stiff and such pristine nature posed a challenge to human activities. Then how were people in Goguryeo, especially women, able to survive such a rugged natural environment? I reached the conclusion that women there must have been strong and wild enough to conquer such a natural setting."
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| A still from film "The Great Battle" (2018) Courtesy of Soojak Film |
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| A still from the TV drama "Love in the Moonlight" Courtesy of KBS |
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| Actor Song Joong-ki wears hanbok made for the TV drama "Sungkyunkwan Scandal" by costume designer Lee Jin-hee Courtesy of Lee Jin-hee |
In South Korea, she said, there were few historical books or documents that provide detailed information about clothing of the ancient kingdom.
Although she succeeded in visualizing the costume she wanted to make she was unable to find the fabric that she needed in Korea. She traveled to Japan three times in vain in search of the right fabric and eventually discovered what she wanted in India.
Lee was able to put together the costume for Goguryeo women in "The Great Battle" after her visits to several countries.
Her professionalism and perfectionism have helped her work as a costume director in some 100 projects, including films and dramas, over the past 23 years. She has made about 30,000 costumes.
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| Lee Jin-hee, costume director and CEO of HAMU, poses with an object inspired by wartime sex slaves during an interview with The Korea Times at her office and store in Jongno-gu, Seoul, Dec. 3. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
"A costume director is someone who interprets the characters of dramas or movies, visualizes them (and their style of clothing) and directs the visual tone for the stage and the films," Lee said.
Her costumes are not only made based on her abundant knowledge of garments but they are also created to add something extra to the storylines and characters through Lee's use of specific fabrics, colors and silhouettes.
In the TV drama "Love in the Moonlight," Lee added unusual pastel colors to the hanbok, to give the sense of blooming youth. In TV drama "Sungkyunkwan Scandal," she printed the painting "Portrait of a Beauty" by Shin Yun-bok, a legendary painter in the Joseon Dynasty, for the costume of actor Song Joong-ki to show the background of the era and the uniqueness of the character.
In the 2018 film "The Great Battle," which won her the best costume design award in the Grand Bell Awards, she tried to express the power of primitive life in the ancient period by using the color black and rough fabrics. She changed the color of surgical clothes from green to blue in MBC drama "Behind the White Tower" to give a taste of modernity in the operating room. In the film "The Treacherous" (2015), she made the outfit of King Yeonsan bigger and heavier than its original form to show the burden on his shoulders as a king and depicted the madness of the character using red.
Her masterpieces are the result of her decades of endeavoring to analyze scripts and gather relevant information about the costumes she was to produce. But she said the inspiration comes from everywhere, including her own personal experiences.
"I was inspired by many things I observe on a daily basis. Sometimes it could be color, texts, paintings or research materials."
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| Lee Jin-hee, costume director and CEO of HAMU, draws during an interview with The Korea Times at her office and store in Jongno-gu, Seoul, Dec. 3. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
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| Lee Jin-hee, costume director and CEO of HAMU, examines fabric during an interview with The Korea Times at her office and store in Jongno-gu, Seoul, Dec. 3. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
But the high quality comes with a cost. Her experimental spirit sometimes caused her to face criticism that she destroyed the original form of the hanbok. Also, Lee's dedication to getting things just right has resulted in the costume director and her staff getting sick.
"When my staff and I made the traditional costumes for 'The Treacherous,' which is about the desire or the madness of King Yeonsan I decided to characterize it with red colors. I could have bought some fabrics already in the market, but I tested hundreds of red colors and found the perfect one. I used some chemicals to decolorize and dye the fabrics for three months. But the chemicals turned out to be very toxic to human beings. My colleague had to be hospitalized after coughing up blood all of a sudden while dyeing the fabrics. After the project, I also had to rest for about a year."
Lee was trained to be a perfectionist. She majored in stage design with a minor in costume design at Korea National University of Arts, where she was taught to make high-quality stage sets and costumes. As a student who was most interested in painting, working as a costume director was not an option she initially considered when she first entered the art university.
But after viewing clothing in a museum, she said she realized the power of costumes as a storytelling device and decided to become a costume director.
"I found a military uniform of a soldier who participated in World War II at a war museum in the Czech Republic. It was tainted with blood. The uniform was discolored, but I could imagine the scenery that the person had to face in the battlefields and felt for him."
Her mother's sudden death is another event that prompted her to become a costume designer.
"After she passed away, I had to choose what to burn from my mother's belongings. I burnt almost everything. But I couldn't burn my mother's dress because I instantly saw the history of her from it. She was a frugal person, so she wore the same old clothes again and again when she raised me and two my siblings. In a family picture taken when she had me in her belly, she was holding my older brother's hand and wearing the dress. I could connect with my mother through that dress. Again, I realized time and space can be also expressed through costumes, which is what I was trying to do with the stage design."
Her hard work and aesthetic hanbok dresses helped her to become a star costume director, but the more experience she had in making hanbok, the more she found its beauty and felt bad for not having more chances to promote the charm and philosophy of hanbok.
"Hanbok has power in its design and color. The unique combination of curves and straight lines is very simple but harmonious and elegant. Especially, its natural-dyed colors are aesthetically pleasing … Western costumes show the body shape through corsets and add accessories to seek beauty. But Korean costumes are basically flat patterned, meaning they change shape according to body lines, which is beautiful and comfortable for the wearer at the same time. I wanted to make clothes that feature Korean identity in the same way Yohji Yamamoto's brand does for Japan."
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| A model wears HAMU's 003 season clothes at Seoul Wave, Nov. 14 Courtesy of HAMU |
So she launched her design brand HAMU in 2018, which aims to make genderless clothes inspired by hanbok. HAMU, meaning dance of water, uses natural and quality fabrics such as silk from Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, and mosi, or ramie fabric from Hansan, South Chungcheong Province, and adopts natural dyeing methods to achieve colorful fabrics. Having no gender separation, her designs also lack fixed sizes, extravagant ornaments and even zippers.
"I wanted to make clothes that are comfortable and liberating but strong enough to wear… while implementing the beauty of hanbok."
The identity of HAMU, or being genderless, is rather a reflection of the fast-changing society, with many people wanting to wear various forms of garments.
"Koreans have been oppressed by gender roles under Confucianism until recently. There is no point to divide genders anymore. Wearing clothes is a matter of taste. There are men who want to wear skirts and women who want to wear boyish jackets. It is a reflection of the changing times."
She said she is ready to promote the beauty of hanbok through her work, amid China's distortion of history and the rising popularity of Korean culture, while coming up with experimental and trendy clothes through her brand.
"It is unfortunate, but China is thoroughly rewriting the history of the ancient times as part of its history research project, dubbed the Northeast Project. It insists our Goguryeo history is theirs. Thankfully, as Korean culture has gained more attention recently, many would know the originality of hanbok and history belonging to Korea. But it is still necessary for people like us to archive and promote our culture. That's why I held a rare fashion show where dancers and singers performed with Korean traditional music as Korean cultural content."
She held her brand's third fashion show last month and showed new lineups inspired by the Joseon period. The first and second shows were inspired by ancient times. She also held an exhibition to show her collection of stage costumes using AI technology.
"I want to experiment with my clothes for a while, which can lead the trends and also reflect Asian and Korean identity. Also, (as I did with my previous fashion show) I would like to continue to create a storytelling fashion show to could promote Korean fundamental culture in the fields of food, clothing and shelter in a certain art form."
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| Lee Jin-hee, costume director and CEO of HAMU, poses during an interview with The Korea Times at her office and store in Jongno-gu, Seoul, Dec. 3. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
