Overview
Unified Silla dressed its officials as the Tang did, and its people as Koreans had. That double arrangement — an imported court costume above an unbroken native wardrobe — is the shape of Korean dress for the next thousand years, and it starts here as deliberate policy rather than drift.
Key garments and style
Officials wore the danryeong, a round-collared robe closing to the right with a belt, adopted from Tang practice in the mid-seventh century, with rank shown by colour in a graded sequence — purple at the top, then crimson, then blue and yellow below — and by the material of the belt. Women of the court took up Tang forms too, including the high-waisted skirt and the long shawl over the arms.
Underneath, the jeogori with baji or chima continued, and for most of the population nothing about the court’s Tang turn made any difference at all.
Silla’s own bone-rank system regulated dress in detail, prescribing not only colour but permitted fabrics, ornaments, carriage fittings and house sizes by hereditary grade — one of the most explicit sumptuary codes anywhere, and one that bound the aristocracy as much as it excluded everyone else.
Silk and gold work continued at a high level, and Silla traded both along the routes that reached Tang China and beyond.
Transition
Goryeo inherited the arrangement and refined it under Buddhist aristocratic taste, before the Mongol century began the long shortening of the jeogori.