Lee Hye-soon holds onto hanbok tradition

Hanbok designer Lee Hye-soon pose works with the materials in this file photo taken at her shop Damyeon in Cheongdam-dong, Seoul. / Courtesy of Lee Hye-soon

By Kim Ji-soo

• Published Nov 30, 2014 3:54 PM KST
• Updated Nov 30, 2014 3:54 PM KST

By Kim Ji-soo

Sitting in her chair at her hanbok shop in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul, Lee Hye-soon cuts a rotund triangle from her handmade hanbok consisting of white “jeogori” or traditional Korean upper jacket and a deep blue skirt. The absence of creases on her dress conveys an image of calm.

“The Korean hanbok is the result of women who are not loquacious,” Lee said.

Lee, 54, is a hanbok designer who wants modern Koreans to reacquaint themselves with the elegant and beautiful yet pragmatic hanbok that their ancestors used.

“Hanbok are designed based on a flat dimension, which the human body is not. Unlike Western clothing, which cuts out material according to the lines of the human body to accentuate, hanbok leaves it, and thus, wearing hanbok is the art of adjusting clothes to the body lines,” she said.

She recalled how Koreans’ ignorance of hanbok resulted into one of the most embarrassing moments in her life. In August of 2011, Lee walked into the nation’s top hotel, the Shilla Seoul to enjoy a meal at one of its restaurants. However, the restaurant staff barred her from entering the restaurant for fear that the skirt of her custom-made hanbok would disturb the traffic within the restaurant. Although the hotel, including its CEO, Lee Boo-jin, later apologized to Lee in person, Lee was still disappointed by the ignorance and disregard of today’s Koreans about their traditional attire.

Over the years, Lee learned that the beauty of hanbok emerges when it’s worn. She recalled an incident last summer when she took a walk along the Seine River in Paris. She needed to walk to sort through her thoughts and tap into the source of inspiration for her designs. She was stopped by an elderly Frenchman who, in French, told her that her presence in hanbok cleared away the clutter in his mind.

“That’s hanbok; we had just forgotten about it,” Lee said.

So, to make the Korean public take notice of the traditional attire once again, Lee outfitted the nation’s leading ballerinas in her clothes in a special collaborative project with photographer Park Se-jun called “Skywalk.” Lee dressed ballerinas Kim Ju-won and Kim Ji-young, whose photos are on display at Gana Art Gallery in Seoul through Dec. 7.

“The idea is to have people look at the ballerinas dressed in hanbok and want to wear one themselves,” Lee said of her collaboration with Park.

She said she hopes to “make hanbok an object of desire.”

Lee believes the more people see the prima ballerinas wearing hanbok, the more they will be motivated to wear the traditional attire. That’s why she has collaborated with various agents of popular culture in Korea. She created the hanbok for the 2003 film “Untold Scandal” starring Bae Yong-joon and Cannes winner Jeon Do-yeon and for the 2008 movie “Ssangwhajeom” or “Frozen Flower” starring Jo In-sung and Joo Jin-mo.

While Koreans in the 21st century are more open to hanbok especially its modern version, like that worn by film director Kim Ki-duk, they often wear it on formal occasions. Lee hopes to make it popular everyday wear, which is invariably linked with memories of her family. Lee’s first concrete memory of hanbok was when she entered university, where she majored in a foreign language. Her mother ordered two sets of hanbok for herself and her daughter to celebrate her eldest daughter’s matriculation in college. When the hanbok arrived, Lee and her mother put them on, and her ever-stern father commented that she looked pretty.

“You know, our generation’s fathers never talked too much, so that comment motivated me,” Lee said.

She got started in the hanbok business in earnest when she was around 30. She initially bought textiles from Gwangjang Market and played with colors to create her designs. Her design steadily won customers, prompting her to open the shop Damyeon in 2003 in Cheongdam-dong. Lee also procures textiles from a specialty shop in Jeonju, South Jeolla Province.

Earlier this year, the hanbok designer was thinking about whether to stick to the silk that is naturally dyed at a workshop in Jeonju, which she has been using for 20 years.

“When you think about the value of the material and the handwork, these hanbok pieces are not expensive,” Lee said. Ultimately, Lee decided to continue using the naturally dyed material for her hanbok.

“Fortunately, I reached the conclusion that that was the way to go,” she said.