Hanbok

On a Korean street a few hundred years ago, one glance at the clothes going by was enough to read a great deal about the people wearing them.

Those in white were commoners. In some periods, the law did not let commoners wear bright colors, which were kept for the classes above them.

A girl in a yellow jacket and a red skirt was usually not yet married.

A woman in green and red was married.

A whole street like that was a page full of writing. Anyone who could read it knew at once where the person opposite stood in society and whether they had settled into married life. The reader could even tell whether that person was allowed to wear the color they had on.

That outfit is called hanbok. And before turning to the second picture, here is what it is made of.

On top is the jeogori, a jacket worn by men and women alike, covering the arms and the upper body. It usually has no buttons. It is tied shut with a strip of cloth called the goreum. At first the goreum was only a tie to keep the jacket from falling open, purely practical. But over time it was made longer and wider, then tied into a large bow hanging down in front of the chest. The tie had become the most beautiful part of the outfit.

For women, the lower half is the chima, a skirt made from rectangular panels of cloth, pleated or gathered and then drawn into the waistband. For men, it is the baji, a pair of trousers cut very wide. There is a very concrete reason for that width. Koreans sit on the floor, so the trousers need enough room to sit cross-legged without pulling tight.

The trousers have another remarkable side. They are far older than the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea for about five centuries from 1392. The baji style goes back to the Three Kingdoms period on the peninsula, many centuries before Gyeongbokgung Palace was built. The Three Kingdoms period was the age when ancient Korea was divided into the kingdoms of Silla, Goguryeo and Baekje. Some things in a people's wardrobe outlast its dynasties.

When the weather turned cold, there was the durumagi, an outer coat worn on top. Its name means closed all around, and it lives up to the name. This style was not born on the peninsula. It came in from the clothing of the northern peoples, and then it stayed for good.

Seen as a whole, hanbok has a shape all its own, the shape of a bell. It is small at the top and flares out at the bottom. That shape was not there from the start. It formed gradually during the Joseon period, as the skirt grew wider and wider while the jacket above grew tighter and shorter. By around the 17th and 18th centuries, the fullest part of the skirt had settled around the hips.

The result is that when the wearer walks, the lower half moves first, the hem swaying back and forth, while the upper half stays almost still. It makes each step look lighter than it really is.

Now for the second picture.

The street is still in Seoul, just outside the gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace, but it is the street of today.

Along it stand dozens of shops that rent out hanbok. Visitors walk in, choose a color and a style, put it on, and step back outside to stroll all afternoon. Middle school students go about in groups. A foreign couple fumbles with the bow on the chest. A Vietnamese father holds up his phone and steps back a few paces to photograph the whole family.

And this is where the two pictures touch.

The hanbok those people are wearing, that shape and those colors, comes mostly from the style of the Joseon aristocracy and royal family. In other words, something a commoner was not allowed to put on a few hundred years ago can now be rented by anyone.

There is more. In 2013, Gyeongbokgung Palace began letting visitors in traditional Korean dress enter without paying. So the very outfit that once set the high apart from the low was now enough to open the palace gate, with no ticket needed.

For Koreans today, hanbok is no longer everyday clothing. It is kept for formal occasions: weddings, festivals, and ceremonies within the family. In 1996, South Korea went as far as creating a Hanbok Day to encourage people to wear it again.

So if you ever try one on, notice just one small detail: the goreum bow on the chest. It began as nothing more than a string to keep the jacket from coming undone. The whole outfit is like that. Its most beautiful part grew out of its most necessary one.

Then do exactly what was done at the start of this story: stand in the middle of the street and read the colors of the people walking past.

This time, nothing can be read at all. The girl in a yellow jacket and a red skirt may already have three children. The one dressed in royal colors may have just stepped off the subway after a shift. No color speaks for anyone anymore.

It is a lovely way for an old costume to go on living: drop all the rules, and keep the bow.