Abstract

The present study aims at investigating the style change of the Korean women's traditional costume and analyzing its character in accordance with the social changes during the period from the civilization in 1884 to the present. The design of the tranditional costume which might be formed in the era of the Three Kingdoms had been slowly modified, and the Korean jacket and skirt design was settled in the Chosun period. In the end of the Chosun period, the drastic social changes such as civilization and revolution, together with the introduction of western dresses, affected strongly the traditional costume design. This led to a change from the old dress design to the stylish and practical one because civilized women and high school girls wore the modified costume composed of long jacket and short skirt or western style dresses. In recent years after 1960's Korean women usually wore traditional costumes as ceremonial dresses be-cause the western style dresses replaced the tra-ditional costume in everyday life. After 1970's, however, the A-line silhouette, combined with ornaments, adapted to the traditional costume in order to emphasize women's beauty, thereby resulting in remarkable modification in the tra-ditional costume. In those days, the large pro-duction of various textiles such as nylon and tetron and the appearance of the traditional costume designers played an important role in developing beautiful traditional costume designs and bringing closer together with general public women. These recent design changes might be classified generally by the following three stages ; (1) "the period of settlement" (1965 1975), (2) "the period of maturity" (1976 1985), and (3) "the period of stabilization" (1986 1995). The costume design of each period was discussed and compared in detail according to historical events. From this study, inherent beauty of the Korean traditional costume can be recognized again, and clarified its position as our folkdress. It is also suggested that in future its modification should be achieved continuously in accordance with tra-dition and modern sense.h tra-dition and modern sense.

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