Commitment to Textiles

At the clothing company, Lee showed a strong passion to learn, and this persuaded her coworkers to teach her many skills and knowledge. She returned to school after a long period of feeling lost but with a stronger focus on clothing. ¡°Senior staff at the company who were also going to school slowly began to assign me one small task after another, and I performed well. This led to more requests coming my way,¡± she said. ¡°As what I imagined in my head could be made right away with needlework, I grew more interested in clothing than stage design, which was my primary major. During a trip to the Czech Republic, I found at a war museum a military outfit with traces of bullets. As I was gazing at it, I could feel space-time simultaneously, and I thought that I should focus on clothes rather than being fixated on just building sets for stages.¡±

Lee¡¯s commitment to clothing took on higher meaning after the sudden death of her mother. While organizing her mother¡¯s items, Lee saw something familiar: a maternity dress. ¡°A family photo hung on a wall at the house of one of my mother¡¯s relatives showed my mother, pregnant with me, holding my brother¡¯s hand. My mother in the photo was about as old as I was (at the time of seeing the picture),¡± she said. ¡°Like that, I encountered my mom in her 20s thinking that she must¡¯ve had her own years of dreaming, worrying and evolving as a woman. I burned all of her things, but I couldn¡¯t bring myself to burn that dress. I came to believe that clothes not only hold a person¡¯s body shape and odor but also their memories.¡±

Disregarding Age and Borders

Twenty years of making clothes has provided Lee with an exciting journey spanning generations and borders. She has traveled abroad and studied various eras to research the origins of characters¡¯ stories. Among the films she has worked on, she considers the most ¡°global¡± the 2018 Korean epic ¡°The Great Battle.¡± Due to lack of historical records in South Korea, she had to look through North Korean and Chinese materials, and it was impossible to look at surviving murals and know what costumes people wore at the time except aristocrats. ¡°We had to add some imagination to history. Because cultural exchanges with other nations were abundant at the time of the film, we expanded the range of references to West Asia,¡± she said. ¡°To realize the rough and coarse feel of the clothes, we visited several countries to find fabric woven by hand or loom. We thus designed and obtained the materials and produced thousands of clothes, underwear and even socks for over a year.¡±

The historical drama ¡°Love in the Moonlight¡± shot Lee to fame thanks to the new breed of hanbok she designed for the series. Instead of using diverse and vivid classic colors, she opted for modern pantone colors or color combinations borrowed from European classical paintings. ¡°Costumes don¡¯t stop at historical research but are rather by-products of creation that breathes life into characters,¡± she said.

Early in her career, Lee worked on the Korean production of the Shakespearean play ¡°Hamlet,¡± a valuable work displaying her thoughts and efforts to dress characters regardless of age, gender or nationality. ¡°We had to dress the clowns but because of no background, we couldn¡¯t do anything at first. But that led me to focus solely on the characters. I tried to find out who they were, perhaps a modern-day laborer or a medieval shepherd? By guessing their professions according to their personalities, I took symbols from many eras, which ultimately enabled me to stylize a new world that belongs nowhere.¡±

The TV drama ¡°Love in the Moonlight¡± featured characters wearing new styles of hanbok. © Lee Jin-hee

Searching for Essence

Based on her experiences and her philosophy formed through a long career, Lee has created unique clothing that cannot be categorized. HAMU, her own brand, showcases new hanbok designs that appeal to the public instead of traditional versions. Her designs have no gender division, fixed sizes or extravagant ornaments. ¡°If clothing gets too fancy, the wearer is not revealed. When I made hanbok for the first time while preparing for a play, I was moved by its simple form, elegant colors and graceful movements. Through hanbok, I found the original form and essence of clothes that I must seek,¡± she said.

In addition to preparations to showcase clothes with new messages, she will bring her talents and progressive view of clothing to the 2019 World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju in July this year. She will serve as costume director for the opening and closing ceremonies.

Though part of the rapidly changing and ruthless fashion industry, Lee said she never stops questioning the nature and original form clothing must possess. ¡°Even when depicting a beggar as a character, people nowadays don¡¯t rip or tear clothes as such a display hampers reality. What I¡¯m saying is we live in an age in which clothes are that trivial. These days, you can find clean and nice clothes even as you rummage through a used clothes box. Everyone needs to think about the value of clothing and adopt their own philosophy. Why don¡¯t we maintain what is indigenous to us rather than merely mimicking the latest trends, which change too rapidly?¡±