Traditional(?) Korean Hairstyle!

My friend Olivia, from Write About Birth, emailed me the other day asking if I could help her figure out how to do a specific Korean hairdo! I was excited for the challenge, and borrowed my sister's head of long straight hair to play with. (Thanks, "Daisy"!)

Here's the style ...  Called a "chignon" - I think! Which, loosely translated means, "bun".

(photo courtesy of www.hanfever.com)

After my initial reaction of "Wow! That's beautiful!" My next thought was, "is all that hair REAL?!" lol As it turns out, there are traditional wigs that people, especially royalty, did wear in order to get some of the fancy, huge, traditional Korean updos. However, this practice was pretty much left behind because of the neck strain caused by the heavy human hair pieces! Even to this day, some movie directors choose to forgo the wigs and let their movie be less-than-historically-accurate rather than risk using the heavy wigs! There is one place that still makes and refurbishes these traditional wigs - you can read (or use google translate to read!) about it HERE!

(resource: Ask A Korean)

I also learned that the head piece worn by the girl in the picture is traditional, yet not all that common. It is called a bae'ssi daeng'gi. Which gets it's name from the pear shape of the ornamentation. :) The chignon (bun) is very common, however!

Now on to the style! Here's our version and the How To steps we took to create it. 

In my research of Korean styles - I found this picture...

(www.askakorean.com)

I'm not sure if it's the same 'do or not, but I wouldn't be surprised! So we added the braids into our style as well. (I didn't have any pictures of how they started the braids at the top of the head, so I just made that part up!)

Here's a "before" picture so you can see the length of hair I had to work with...

(Oh goodness, my house is messy!!)

I had brushed it all out (yep, with a brush, lol) and then parted it down the center to her crown.

 (kind of hard to see in this picture, but you can tell it's parted because the hair is hanging down instead of trying to go back.)

Then I sneakily took a bit of hair out right here ...

and braided it!

Then I started french braiding. Here's the tricky part. I took a starting piece of hair up by Daisy's forehead and parted that into my 3 strands to braid. 

Then in this picture you can see that I added in more hair on the right side (by her face) but NOT on the left (hair hanging straight down) --This is Crucial! (lol, well, only if we're copying the second picture!)

At this point (picture) I have started the french braid, added one piece to the second "stitch" and now am holding the first braid...

Flip that little independent braid up over the french braid and out of your way! The rest of the french braid continues as though the little braid was never there. :)

Once you have taken up and added a piece of hair down by the ear - stop adding and just braid like normal for awhile to finish off this braid.

Here you can see the part a little better. I didn't part this beforehand, this is just where I stopped adding hair to the french braid.

Notice I never did add any hair to the left side of that braid, just the right.

Next pull all the hair (except that first small braid) into a low ponytail.
Use a good strong hair tie for this ponytail to help give the rest of the hair something sturdy to anchor to.

Other side! Nice and smooth.

Braid the ponytail!

(Notice little Q back there?! lol She was pointing at "Auntie's" hair and talking about how she wanted to have her's done next - and watch the "puppy movie, fox?!" :)  aka, Disney's The Fox and The Hound!)


Once the hair is braided, flip the whole thing up. 
It's tempting to just twist it around like a normal braided bun, but I really think there's a specific look to it when you start by flipping it up. I learned this from the first video on youtube listed in the resources at the bottom of this post :)

Bobby pin it here if you need/want to. 

Then start bringing the braid around the elastic.

(

(it would be nice if Daisy's hair was a bit longer for this style.)

Pretty much the last step (before accessorizing!) is to bring that very first little braid around under the chignon (bun) and bobby pin it!

Remember this?

How's this?

LOL - ok, so I know it doesn't really look much like it at all. I think part of the problem was that Daisy's hair was just too short. Longer hair would have given us a longer braid and more to wrap around.

I toyed with the idea of trying to add some "hair extensions" or yarn in the middle of the braid to make it thicker. That might work, but it wouldn't solve our length problem. If you had human hair extensions that looked good, then you wouldn't need to hide them and you might be able to get some extra length that way. After all, using wigs is traditionally Korean! :D

Ok, now the other side.
Remember this??

How's this??

There is also the possibility of trying to make two braids instead of one, therefore cheating the length :) However, I didn't do this because I thought each braid would be so small around that they would look funny. I don't know! It would probably be less "authentic" but maybe it would work?

We didn't have the proper traditional Korean hairpieces, and that would change (help!) the look a bit, but we made do with what we had!

I would LOVE to see this style on you!! If anyone feels like giving it a try, please email me with pictures! I'm soooo curious how it would turn out on longer hair. Or if I even got it right at all! LOL

For more fun reading on Korea and Korean Hairdo's visit these sites!

Ask A Korean - by far the most interesting Traditional Korean hair information I found on the web. Has some pictures of different styles and interesting little facts to go along with it!

Korea.net - "Gateway to Korea" - tons of info, tons of links! Not much about hair, but definitely worth checking out if you are interested in Korea at all!

www.soompi.com - Forums! Here are links to two threads about Korean Hairstyles! ONE, TWO!

Life Capsule - a crazy snapshot of some Wild Traditional Styles! These are all wigs and were worn by people in the palace!
O. M. G. blog - Pictures of Traditional Korean Hairstyles (I found these exact pictures in about 3 different places on the web!) 

and, of course, youtube.com! I'll let you do more searches here on your own, if you're interested - and Let me know if you find this particular style that we're attempting to do today!! - but first I wanted to share two updo videos I just thought were neat. THIS one is simple and pretty (and where I learned about wrapping the bun) and THIS video has a few different amazingly intricate traditional styles. Enjoy!