Deep Purple Silk Traditional Korean Vest

These two pieces reveal how Korean hanbok construction travels through time while adapting to different contexts. The 1920s purple vest borrows the hanbok's signature curved seam lines and silk-on-silk layering principle, but compresses the traditional jeogori jacket into a fitted Western-style vest that could slip under a flapper dress.

These two Korean vests trace the evolution of hanbok's sleeveless jeogori across six decades, yet their shared DNA runs deeper than time. The purple silk version from the 1920s shows how traditional Korean tailoring absorbed Art Deco sensibilities—that rich jewel tone and the way the fur trim follows the same clean geometric lines as the later beige cotton vest, which strips the silhouette back to its essential form.

That burgundy vest with its cream silk lining and fur trim carries the same structural logic as the contemporary hanbok's high-waisted jeogori—both garments understand that the waist is a pivot point, not a destination. The vest's abbreviated silhouette and the modern hanbok's cropped jacket both stop abruptly at the ribcage, creating that distinctly Korean proportion where the torso becomes a pedestal for voluminous skirts below.

The purple vest's curved armholes and abbreviated silhouette echo the jeogori's fundamental wrap construction, but strip away everything ceremonial—the long sleeves, the graceful ties, the full coverage that marks Korean formal dress. Where the cream jeogori flows with traditional proportions and careful color blocking at the collar, the vest crops that same gentle V-neck into something almost Western, almost modern, yet unmistakably rooted in hanbok's architectural logic.