Nowadays people's interest in culture is so high that they say, The 21st century is the age of cultural war. In Korea as well, the value of culture is being recognized and huge efforts are being exerted for cultural development. One of such efforts is...
Nowadays people's interest in culture is so high that they say, The 21st century is the age of cultural war. In Korea as well, the value of culture is being recognized and huge efforts are being exerted for cultural development. One of such efforts is research on tradition. In the area of hairstyle, several researches are being carried out on traditional hairstyle, but most of them are based on literature and researches on the reproduction of traditional women's hairstyle are not sufficient.
In order to reproduce hairstyle, this study investigated the change of women's hairstyle according to social standing, marriage and occupation. In the late Chosun Dynasty, the decree of prohibiting false hair and the spread of practical science brought changes in women's hairstyle. Such changes include changes in emphasized points, in the shape of exaggeration and in symmetry and asymmetry by prevalent fashion. In addition, this study classified women's hairstyles found in genre paintings and photographs by social standing, marriage and occupation and applied them to contemporary hairstyle to develop designs usable in real life. 1. The Chosun Dynasty adopted Confucianism as the foundation of national policies and prohibited women from advancing to the society under the law of separating men and women. Thus women in noble families put on Unjeonmeori-hair, false hair to express the social standing and dignity. 2. Career women in the Chosun Dynasty made efforts to make up more gorgeous appearance than ordinary women, which brought forth Unjeonmeori-hair that was unbalancedly exaggerated to one side and the hairstyle had a significant influence on noble women as well as ordinary ones. 3. In the early Chosun Dynasty hairstyle using false hair symbolized social standing and economic abilities but in the mid- and late period of Chosun all women used Unjeonmeori-hair regardless of social standing, so hairstyle was no more an indicator of social standing. 4. This study reproduced women's hairstyle based on genre paintings and photographs. According to the result, the difference of social standing was reflected in the hair braided behind the ears, which was hairstyle for unmarried women. The most popular hairstyle for married women was Unjeonmeori-hair using false hair.
Turning the end of the 19th century no difference was observed in hairstyle among women of different classes but ordinary women were still hardly able to made them up because of hard labor and women in noble families did their hair up neatly in a chignon.