Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Getting to Know Asia: Hanbok

As mentioned before, this series touches on other cultures and countries around Asia with the idea that kimono and Japanese things become easier to identify when you know what they're not.

Tonight is a peek into "hanbok", the traditional clothing of Korea. I will be the first to say that while I find hanbok pretty, I know extremely little about the various categories and terminology.

However, the good news for Japanese kimono collectors is that hanbok in its many forms looks nothing like kimono. Once you see a few examples, you'll never mistake traditional Korean clothing for Japanese (note the high knot tied at the chest, the contrasting collars, etc.).



Various types of traditional Korean clothing.
Images courtesy Wikimedia.

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