Beautiful colour harmony of Korean costume
From old times, our ancestors preferred light, delicate and vivid colours to deep colours.
They used a lot the pale and delicate neutral tints as well as the light and bright colours such as white, jade green and light pink as for the clothes.
They made several neutral tints which could be normally classified into reddish, purplish, yellowish and greenish lines.
Such colours were diversely applied to the dressing life of our people.
Women mostly put on the sedate and bright clothes of light pink, pale green or cream colour, in warm spring, and fresh ones of jade green or light blue in hot summer. Children also liked to wear bright and vivid coloured dresses. Especially the sleeves, collars and strings of their jackets were of different colours, and jogori (jacket) with rainbow-striped sleeves came into wear on holidays.
Korean costume composed of upper garment (jacket) and lower garment (skirt or trousers) has an advantage to diversify the harmony of colours. The harmony of colours by matching different coloured jackets and lower garments produced the diversity of dressings.
Especially, women liked the different coloured chima (traditional skirt) and jogori (traditional jacket) more than the single coloured ones. They liked the dressings of Rokuihongsang (green jacket and red skirt), Hwanguihongsang (yellow jacket and red skirt) and Hwanguichongsang (yellow jacket and blue skirt) on holidays and ceremonies.
Particularly, the dressing of Hwanguihongsang (yellow jacket and red skirt) finely expressed the excellent aesthetic emotion of our people with brilliant and fresh colour harmony by the contrast of the natural colours - yellow and red.
This shows that women liked the stable colour harmony by using light coloured cloth for the small sized upper garments and dark coloured one for big sized lower garments.
Men liked relatively bright and single coloured dresses like white or jade green. In case to differentiate the colours of upper and lower garments, they put on the light brown, light blue, blue or grey jackets and the delicate coloured trousers.
Korean costume also has an advantage to show its beauty by harmonizing the colours of its elements.
Differentiating the colours of its strings, cuffs and other elements from the colour of women’s jogori helped to avoid the flatness of colour and to decorate it gracefully.
Such jogori that was finer than common jogori was popular on special days and even in everyday life.
Like this, our people have further developed the Korean costume of unique style with diverse and conspicuous colour harmony.