I first went to South Korea in 2012, when I did a 3-month language course over the summer, and I cried when I left. I haven't done that for any other country since.

Seoul is a city after my own heart: jumbling, with districts of very individual flavors spilling into others, old pagodas standing stately beside glittering skyscrapers. An abundance of restaurants and cafes, to the extent that you could spend the rest of your life going from restaurant to cafe to restaurant and never eat at the same place twice. My kind of place. 

Quirky art and bright music, adorable stationery and high-speed internet, PC rooms and noraebang - what we'd call private karaoke rooms - the Koreans work extremely hard but certainly know how to liven things up.

For this photoshoot I rented a hanbok and went to Gyeongbokgung Palace with my sister, Anastasia Lupas, and proceeded to enjoy the palace with a sense of delighted familiarity. Those words pretty much sum up my entire, and far too brief, visit to South Korea: delighted familiarity. 

The hanbok itself consisted of a petticoat with a hoop skirt for volume; then the dress, open in the back and wrapped around - tied over the bust for the voluminous drape down. To finish, an overcoat that's cropped to waist length or extended in two wings in front and back: The royal style. A headpiece and ribbon tied to the end of a braid complete the look.

This photoshoot was an experience unlike the others - not just because of the extensive palace grounds surrounding me (which added a certain stateliness to the proceedings), but because of the many other hanbok-wearing visitors. You don't feel quite so much the odd one out when there are others gamboling around in similar outfits! Check out some of their dresses on the website blog, and I hope you enjoy this month's posts. South Korea's a great country, and I'm delighted to be sharing it with you!