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Evolution of the Mamianqun: Fabrics Design (Part 1)

Nav: Presentation // Intro // Southern Song 南宋 // Yuan 蒙元 // Early Ming 明初 // Mid-Early Ming 明中前 // Mid-Late Ming 明中後 // Late Ming 晚明 // Fabrics Pt 1 // Fabrics Pt 2 // Misc Fun Facts // Conclusion

Patting myself on the back for finally finishing the six main design posts, but still got two more to go!!! This is the fabric design post, arguably the most symbolic part of these six sets with the most juicy lore behind it, so if your thing is Chinese cosmology and symbolism this'll be your jam.

This section is very long (what a surprise), so I'll be dividing it into two posts.

Part one, which is this post, will talk about the mythology and folktale inspiration behind the design elements, and introduce the different parts of the skirt design. I will do a deep dive into the main part of the design with the longma dragon-horse that appears on the latter three time period's skirt designs.

Part two will expand on the rest of the skirt sections, which are smaller and less detailed. I'll also talk a bit about the variation of the skirt designs through the different time periods.

～The Lore～

The Chinese name for the Metamorphosis set is 龍馬負圖 / long2 ma3 fu4 tu2 / "Dragon-Horse Bearing the Diagram." This is a reference to the story of the 河圖洛書 / he2 tu2 luo4 shu1 / "River Diagram and Luo Book," more commonly known as the Yellow River Map and Luo River Square. These are two visual diagrams that appear in very very early Chinese legends and mythology about the beginning of Dynastic China. They look like this:

Src: 河圖洛書, 2017

I will explain more on what exactly these represent later, but for now, just know that they appear in a number of legends recounted by very famous early writings such as thing 易經 / yi4 jing1 / "I'Ching" text, most of which share similar elements. The one that stuck out to me most was the legend of 大禹治水 / da4 yu2 zhi4 shui3 / "Yu the Great Tames the Waters," which can be considered somewhat of a secondary creation myth.

There's no evidence of this guy's existence, but the story goes that pre-dynastic China often suffered from devastating floods from the Yellow River, which kept them from advancing very far. The worst of these was the Great Flood, a massive flood that extended over at least two generations. The emperor at the time, Yao, had been trying to solve this problem for a long time, but the first person who tried, 鯀 / Gun—Yu the Great's father, also called 白馬 / bai2 ma3 / White Horse—failed to control the waters, so the task was passed down to his son.

L: Standing Portrait of King Yu of Xia, National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, 中畫000257N000000000 // R: Yellow River, whose watershed covers most of northern China and drains to the Yellow Sea, Wikimedia Commons

It's said that Yu dedicated most of his life to solving this problem. A number of stories related to this process have been told, one of which being the legend of the Yellow River Map and Luo River Square. Seeing that Yu was going in the wrong direction, the gods sent a great dragon-horse and a giant tortoise as messengers to the earth, who emerged from the waters bearing these diagrams on their backs, revealing clues about divination and geomancy to Yu the Great.

After consulting the diagrams, he realized that he had been mistaken and changed direction, ultimately succeeding in his goal after many years. Some other variations have different animals or people revealing the diagrams to different people, but for the year of the horse I focused on the version that has the dragon-horse bearing the Yellow River Map on its coat.

Src: ​龍馬負河圖洛書, CADAL06200462 古本小說集成：開闢衍繹通俗志傳,1685, Wikimedia Commons

Eventually Yu tamed the waters through a complex irrigation system and opening an artificial channel out to sea, which made him so popular with the people that the emperor declared him his heir. He allegedly took the throne in his 50s, establishing the Xia Dynasty, the very first dynasty in Chinese historiography.

From a broader level, deluge myths are extremely common in early history across the world (although the nuwa story matches them more closely than this one tbh). I feel like almost everyone has their own version of a massive flood that ended up leading to some sort of new beginning.

I think this legend takes place in a grey area between myth and history, too far back to have much evidence of existence, but recent enough to be relatively acceptable when considered a dramatized version of events. At any rate it's an extremely significant part of Chinese folklore, and while the dragon-horse only plays a small part in it, I latched onto this as the primary inspiration for this set.

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～The Fabric Design～

Since most of the mamianqun fabrics are just variations of the same central design, I’ll use the most complex one as the visual example since it already contains all of the elements found in the other skirt designs. That would be the mid-early Ming mamianqun. At the end of this section I will talk briefly about how this design was modified for the other time periods' skirts.

We can first separate this into a few distinct repeating horizontal pattern sections. If we regard the pattern covering a majority of the area as the ‘base’ pattern (B), there are four distinct pattern sections (1,2,3,4), plus a divider pattern (D) that appears multiple times between them.

(1): Hem Block 底襴

The lowest pattern block near the hem of the skirt is also the widest and the one that appears in both of the other colored mamianqun designs (mid-late and late Ming). Some of the elements were moved around a bit to compress the block proportions for the other designs, but most of them remain the same. I regard this as the “main” design block, as most of the storytelling elements are concentrated here.

The primary scene depicted is a longma dragon-horse galloping through the waves, but every design element included has a meaning to it. 

The Longma

First the creature itself. This is a somewhat modern interpretation of a dragon-horse, with some modern aesthetics prioritized. The legs, hooves, body shape, and tail are all very horse-like, with some added dragon features like the flaming mane, belly scales, straight-back horns, whiskers, and wrinkled nose. The spiral patterns on the horse’s chest and flank as well as the fire wheels coming off of the hind leg joints were also elements taken from usual depictions of eastern dragons, who often have similar flaming wheels on their ankles. 

Src: Imperial Encyclopaedia - Animal Kingdom - pic210 - 龍馬圖.svg, 《古今圖書集成》, Wikimedia Commons

There are a couple different ways this creature can be interpreted. One is as the longma dragon-horse from the legend of this set’s namesake, as one of the two creatures that surfaced from the Yellow River as witnessed by Yu the Great, as described before. The Classic of the Mountains and Seas describe longma as being able to walk on water without sinking and as a sign of a divine ruler.

Src: 图：武官常服补子纹样, 明代群臣之服：常服 // Sea-Horse ninth rank is the lower right square (武九品）

Another is as the 海馬 / hai3 ma3 / "Sea-Horse" (not the fish), a dragon-like horse which is depicted on the ninth-rank martial officer rank badge in the Ming Dynasty official uniform system, used specifically to contrast against the five-clawed imperial dragon buzi badge on the mid-late Ming set’s round-collar robe, as a representation of the wild disarray and constant flouting of fashion rules during that time period.

Src: JourneytotheWest.jpg, Tang Sanzang riding on the White Dragon Horse, Wikimedia Commons

Last is as the 白龍馬 / bai2 long2 ma3 / white dragon-horse (that's literally his name) from the famous Ming Dynasty novel 西遊記 / xi1 you2 ji4 / "Journey to the West" (you may also know it as the Monkey King), a dragon prince originally living in a river who shapeshifts into the party’s steed (after accidentally eating their horse, as you do). You’ll notice that even though they have slightly different names and contexts, all of these depictions are actually quite consistent with each other: there’s always some sort of very powerful horse-dragon mix that has something to do with a body of water.

The Waves

The top and bottom of this block are lined with a wave pattern, crested with white foam. Waves are often depicted in a very circular, spiraling manner, adding a sort of rolling motion to them. This is helped by the repeated parallel lines giving them dimension, plus the white seafoam that helps partition some of the different wave sections from each other.

Src: 武官九品海馬補子, National Digital Archive Program, Taiwan (Qing Dynasty)

The original haima sea-horse buzi depicts a horse galloping over repeated waves, so I kept that framing in the composition of this piece, though the waves are more organic and less repetitive. They also come down from the top, which is more of an aesthetic decision than a symbolic one, but I did notice that the waves look remarkably similar to clouds if you color them white, which makes sense given the Chinese term 雲海 / yun2 hai3 / “sea of clouds,” which refers to the view you often get on Asian mountaintops where the clouds are so dense and thick that they look like a white ocean sprawling out in front of you. You could say that, with the celestial nature of dragons, this horse could be either galloping over the water or treading over the clouds—you just don’t know!

河圖洛書

Next I want to go over these two repeated symbols, the former of which you’ll see in the base pattern as well. These are a continuation of the 河圖洛書 story: they’re visual representations of the 河圖 and the 洛書.

The traditional depictions of these two ‘maps’ look like this. They’re arrangements of black and white dots in kind of a square array. It’s somewhat debated what they actually represent, and their exact functional role in the legends is vague, but they’re generally considered divination or cosmology maps that have to do with the bagua eight trigrams, the five elements, and five cardinal Chinese directions.

洛書 / The Luoshu Square

Src: Luo Square, Wikipedia (various imaged pieced together by me to fool tumblr's image limit)

Upon a closer look we can see that the Luoshu has nine objects arranged in a 3x3 matrix. Each object is made up of a different number of dots: the ones with an even number of dots are black, and the ones with an odd number of dots are white. If we convert the numbers of dots into numbers, we will get a matrix that looks like this: (4, 9, 2; 3, 5, 7; 8, 1, 6).

An extremely important observation is that this arrangement constitutes what we call a third order normal magic square: if you add up the three numbers in any row, column, or diagonal of the array, you will get the same number (try it yourself—what’s the magic sum?) You might also notice that each of the integers 1 through 9 are used once—this is what we call a normal magic square.

I’d previously only encountered magic squares when playing with AMC problems in middle school, so it was really interesting to see it pop up here. Remarkably, the luoshu is the smallest possible normal magic square (reflections and rotations of the same square are not considered distinct, and squares with repeated number entries don’t count). Every possible 3x3 normal magic square is a transformation of this one.

If you look closely at each shape you will recognize that each one has a number of “lobes” or “sections.” The even-numbered shapes are filled in with red, and the odd-numbered shapes are teal and have negatives corresponding to their number. For example, the shape on the left has three spokes, and the one in the middle contains five compartments. Each of them exhibit some sort of repetition, imagery, or sectioning that has to do with their number, and they’re arranged in the same way as the Luo square, so that any row, column, or diagonal will add up to 15.

河圖 / The Yellow River Map

Src: 河圖與洛書

The Yellow River Map is a little more confusing in what exactly it is—there doesn’t seem to be an agreed-upon mathematical relationship like in its counterpart, and it’s a bit more complex. Some think that the version that we have now may not be the same as the original, and that if we had the original then the relationship would be equally obvious. It does have some established linkages to ideas in Chinese cosmology, but they won’t make much sense unless you’ve got somewhat of a background in that (which is not me).

As in the Luoshu, some of the dots (even arrangements) are filled in and some (odd arrangements) are blank. The integers 1-10 also appear once each, with 10 uniquely wrapping all the way around the central 5.

Culturally, this was the primary map that helped Yu the Great construct his irrigation and drainage system. While the myths vary in the form and identity of the person, deity, or spirit that actually gave him the map, it's generally hinted at that this was some sort of directional mapping of the surrounding land and topology, which helped Yu figure out how to build channels through what he later established as the Nine Provinces.

The visual symbol I came up with for this one is a little less abstract, preserving the dots on the outside and most of the structure, although I neglected to include the lines. The 3 and 4 I turned into a fan shape instead of just dots, and the outer four numbers were arranged in a curved shape to make the footprint of the whole symbol a bit more interesting. The top and bottom halves of the 10 are disconnected but represented by 5 teardrop shapes above and 5 below, as some other depictions have the dots split up in this way but connected by lines.

The Silk Moths

If you thought these were butterflies, you thought wrong—these are silk moths! Specifically bombyx mori, the domesticated silk moth.

Why include them? While it's not super common anymore, silkworms did have a connection to horses in older Chinese folklore, apparently stemming from the fact that the silkworm's head is shaped similarly to a horse's head. The more popular origin story of sericulture stems from Leizu, the Empress of the Yellow Emperor, who discovered silk after a cocoon fell into her hot tea and invented the art of sericulture and weaving.

Src: Silkworms, Invertebrate Welfare

An alternative is the story of 馬頭娘 / ma3 tou2 niang2 / "Horse-Headed Maiden," a girl who promised to marry her family's white horse if he brought her father home from war/kidnapping/going to the store for milk, which he did. Her father, not wanting a horse for a son-in-law, killed the horse, but when he hung its hide up to dry, it flew up, wrapped around the girl, and carried her away into a mulberry tree, where she was transformed into a silk-spitting, horse-headed silkworm. She then eventually ascended to the heavens and was worshipped as the goddess of silkworms. Records of this story appear in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Taiping Guangji, the Rites of Zhou, etc.

Beyond that story I'm sure I don't have to elaborate on the whole silk-clothes-hanfu thing :p

L: Domestic silkmoth, Bombyx Mori, Photo 369978040, (c) GD, all rights reserved, uploaded by GD, iNaturalist, April 2024 // R: Wild silkmoth, Photo 517391659, no rights reserved, iNaturalist, June 2025

In terms of design elements, domestic silk moths (bombyx mori) are leucistic, in comparison to wild silk moths (bombyx mandarina), which are brown. I tried to mimic the textured veins of the wings of the silkmoth in my design, as well as the fuzzy antennae, the thicker thorax, and the resting angle/general silhouette of the wings. Overall, I'm not sure how recognizable they are as silk moths, but I like that I was able to include this bit of detail.

Bird / Bat

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a... bat?

Regardless of what it is, it's flying! I kept this shape ambiguous on purpose. Gulls flying over the sea are one option, given the ocean setting—the pointed tail and head would lend themselves to the shape of a beak and narrower tail feathers.

However, another possibility is bats. While they may seem like an odd choice, bats are also good-luck systems often depicted on woven fabrics and embroidery in Chinese clothing in varying levels of simplification.

Src: 乾隆青花粉彩桃蝠纹双耳抱月瓶, 满清文物中的传统吉祥纹样——蝠纹, Prince Kung's Palace Museum

Bats are considered lucky because of their name in Chinese, 蝙蝠 / bian1 fu2, or just 蝠 / fu2 in its bound form, which is pronounced the same as the character for good luck, 福 / fu2. They're incorporated into ceramics, textiles, carvings, paintings etc. in various levels of simplification and abstraction. I find that the most common indicator of a bat being depicted is the forward angled point of the wrist joint on its wing, which is sometimes pointed and sometimes just curved. My design does have a forward curve, but it's not very exaggerated, so it's sort of up to the viewer.

壽字 / The "Shou" Character

Above the longma there's a red circle representing the sun (Chinese depictions of the sun are usually more red than yellow) and the Oracle Bone Script (really old) version of the character 壽 / shou4. Shou is a word that means everlasting, long-lived, etc. It's technically a combination of a phono-semantic character (形聲字 / xing2 sheng1 zi4, aka one part of the character represents its sound, and another part represents its meaning) and a compound ideogram (multiple pictograms combined to create a scene related to the meaning).

Src: 寿字的源字形, 雲美名網

We can divide the character into two pieces: the top part, which is the character 老 / lao3 / "old," and the bottom part, which is an archaic form of the character 疇 / chou2 / "field." The 老 character represents the meaning, and it is a pictogram of an old person with a hunched back. In this ideogram, the person is leaning over the 疇 character like a cane. 疇 in this case functions as a phonetic indicator of the pronunciation of the whole character, shou, which is similar to chou. Later on the 壽 character became more common and culturally significant than 疇, so 疇 was retroactively changed into its own self-referential phonogram: 田 / tian2 / "crops" to denote its meaning and 壽 to denote its sound.

Culturally, the 壽 character is one of the most common good-luck character motifs used in Chinese designs, just like the 福 / fu2 / "luck" character (Chinese people just really wanna get rich, live a long time, and have good luck). The character is often stylized into three types of patterns: 長壽紋 / chang2 shou4 wen2 / "long shou pattern," 花壽紋 / hua1 shou4 wen2 / "flower shou pattern, "and 團壽紋 / tuan2 shou4 wen2 / "round shou pattern." They often appear on embroidery and fabric patterns throughout history as well.

L: 明 缂丝“十二章纹”皇帝衮服（复原件） 十三陵特区办事处藏, 理解自己的文明（16）：华服锦绣（下）｜图鉴, October 2024 // R: 壽字紋, 燎泽文创｜中国传统纹样之寿字纹, November 2025

The other thing is that 壽 is a homophone for the character 獸 / shou4 / "beast." In the Ming Dynasty nine-rank badge system, there are two categories of officials—civil and martial—with nine ranks each. Each rank/category combination was represented by an animal depicted on a badge they wore on their uniforms. The animals depicted for the civil ranks were all heavenly animals, like birds. The animals for the martial ranks, however, were earthly animals, or 獸. The dragon-like 海馬 haima sea-horse, representing the ninth rank martial official, is one of those—tying it all back together.

Okay I'm tired now, saving the rest for the next post!!! Hopefully won't put it off for like three months again x-x

Okay we're almost done! Just a fabric design post + concluding comments left! Also sorry for lack of pics in the first half making it really dense lol, the 30 image limit is lowkey killing me

Works Cited Database [MMQ]

Works Cited Database [MMQ]

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Evolution of the Mamianqun: Mid-Late Ming

Nav: Presentation // Intro // Southern Song 南宋 // Yuan 蒙元 // Early Ming 明初 // Mid-Early Ming 明中前 // Mid-Late Ming 明中後 // Late Ming 晚明 // Fabrics Pt 1 // Fabrics Pt 2 // Misc Fun Facts // Conclusion

Model: Emily Chang (ig: @/emi1y_chang), MAISON at Yale

I want everyone to know that I wrote this entire post THREE FUCKING TIMES because tumblr deleted my draft. anyway moving on.

Background

A lot of the historical background for this one is a continutation of the content discussed in mid-early Ming, so I recommend reading that first if you're interested in the history (or you can just skip it go straight to the clothes if you like).

As previously mentioned, "mid-late Ming" in this project is really closer to "later mid-late Ming," so just keep that in mind.

The Rise of Materialism

We're gonna go all the way back to the beginning for this: the Hongwu Emperor, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He held a strong personal belief in moderation: that restraint was a virtue, and excess was the root of evil. As a consequence he led a very simple, plain lifestyle, and expected powerful people under him to do the same.

L: Wikimedia Commons, A Seated Portrait of Ming Emperor Taizu, National Palace Museum of Taiwan // M: Seated Portrait of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming, Facets of Authority Exhibit, National Palace Museum of Taiwan // R: Wikimedia Commons, 明世宗坐像 (Seated Portrait of Ming Shizong), National Palace Museum of Taiwan.

The first portrait of the Hongwu Emperor, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty; the last is of the Jiajing Emperor, 1477–1555CE (mid-late). You can clearly see how much more extravagant the portraits become as time goes on.

The Hongwu Emperor was the one that set up the whole clothing regulation system after the Yuan-Ming transition. It was probably partially related to his personal philosophy, but it was also most likely a way of purging the influence of the previous dynasty to secure his rule: Yuan rulers and aristocrats were obsessed with nasij/nashiri, or cloth of gold, and indulged in more and more lavish fashions as time went on; plus, clothing had long been one of the main differences between Han people and northern Steppes nomads. The Hongwu Emperor's regulations restricted certain styles of clothing and types of silk to certain people, setting up the precedent of fashion representing rank, and it worked for a while.

But it didn't work forever: there were many problems with this: in placing the means of control in clothing, a material matter, you've already handed over a huge portion of your power to the object of clothing itself. You’ve said that this color is only for people who are this powerful, so that when you see someone wearing it you have proof of powerful they are. If that’s the case, who’s to stop me from making my own clothes in that color, wearing it, and calling myself powerful too?

Src: Illustration of the Jin Ping Mei, Wikimedia Commons, 17th century. Jin Ping Mei is a 16th century erotic novel satirizing this exact social issue—it's very famous and there are English translations of it floating around on the web.

And with commercialization on the rise, this was entirely possible for wealthy people, regardless of nobility, to do—as long as they could pay someone to make it. Everyone wanted the best and brightest. The worst offenders were people already in power, because nobody wanted to criticize them, lest they risk retribution or disrupting the delicate social ecosystem of a household that could probably buy you and your entire family's souls without blinking.

Some emperors tried to combat this by passing more detailed laws, but it never worked for long—at a certain level of detail, it becomes impractical or impossible to enforce. Emperors even violated their own laws, bestowing gifts of robes on individuals that they'd previously stated were banned from wearing said gift, and then expecting them to show up wearing it in court.

Src: 蓝地妆花纱蟒衣, 孔子博物館藏, 孔府舊藏, 齐鲁网, 2017. This is an example of a mangfu, clothing depicting the four-clawed dragon, a common motif for robes bestowed upon individuals by emperors as a sign of favor. Other common motifs include the qilin, feiyu flying fish, and ox.

Over and over again sumptuary fashion laws have been enacted, enforced, and then pretty quickly ignored by everyone. At a certain point, fashion was no longer an indication of your power, it gave you your power. By overemphasizing fashion as a vehicle to enforce ruling structure, they gave power to the fashion itself, not just what it was supposed to represent.

Formerly, only noble families with history and sociopolitical sway might have had access to these kinds of fabrics. But now, the divide between “wealthy” and “powerful” began to dissolve—when they both look the same, how can you tell the difference?

The Nine-Rank System: Mingfu and Buzi

Buzi

Src: 明中葉藍地織金獅紋方補, Middle Ming Blue-Ground Gold-Woven Lion Badge, Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum, Chiayi County, Taiwan

One of the systems first set up by the Hongwu Emperor was the nine-rank badge system for government officials. 補子 / bu3 zi0, also known as rank badges or mandarin squares, are decorative woven or embroidered squares (sometimes also circles) sewn onto the front and back of robes, usually depicting some kind of animal or scene. While their use goes all the way back to the Tang Dynasty, they were used in the Ming and Qing Dynasties to uniform differently ranked government officials.

It worked like this: there were two categories of officials, civil and martial. Each category had nine ranks, with the first rank being the highest. Each rank for civil officials was assigned a different type of bird, and each rank for martial official officials was assigned a different type of land animal. The animal would be depicted on the badge they wore on their robes.

For example, a first-rank civil official wore a crane badge, and a ninth-rank martial official wore a sea-horse badge (not a seahorse, a literal horse galloping over the ocean). First and second rank martial officials both wore lion badges.

Officials were allowed to wear badges of their own rank and also of lower ranks, so a first-rank martial official could wear a sea-horse badge if they wanted. But they couldn't wear badges of ranks above them, so a ninth-rank martial official could not wear a lion badge.

Mingfu

Src: 明代官夫人漢族服飾3D創作 - 以北京故宮女性肖像畫為列, The 3D Creation of Outer Peeress's Han Garment in the Ming Dynasty—Using The Palace Museum of Ten Female Portraits as an Example, dissertation by 徐儷心, advised by 長妃滿, Ming Chuan University, August 2015. Figures 3-2-3 失明男女像軸 (pg 53) and 3-2-2 失明夫婦像軸 (pg 51).

命婦 / ming4 fu4 were the wives of government officials. This set is primarily based on their style of clothing, because they were in an interesting position socially: they got their power through association with their husbands, so they were directly impacted by clothing regulations for officials, but they were also afforded a level of flexibility because they didn't work directly for the central government, and they were women.

But they were still powerful people protected by their ranks, so you couldn't go around accusing them of things randomly without severe consequences. As higher-ups, their fashion choices had the ability to set precedents for other people, but they were also immediately subjected to regulations from the central government specifically made for mingfu. I view them as a very well-positioned indicator of this entire cultural phenomenon as it was happening—their fashion choices reflected the situation.

Src: 明代官夫人漢族服飾3D創作 - 以北京故宮女性肖像畫為列, The 3D Creation of Outer Peeress's Han Garment in the Ming Dynasty—Using The Palace Museum of Ten Female Portraits as an Example, dissertation by 徐儷心, advised by 長妃滿, Ming Chuan University, August 2015. Figure 5-4-8, 一品夫人常服像:霞帔, 3D正背面二視圖 (pg 101). 3D recreation of mingfu dailywear from figure 3-2-2 above.

For example, mingfu were supposed to wear the same buzi as their husbands on round-collared robes of red luo silk. However, there are tons of portraits of mingfu wearing buzi badges way above their station. Apparently it got so bad that at a certain point, everyone only wanted to wear crane and lion badges; nobody wanted to wear the badges assigned to ranks 3-9, and workshops even stopped making them because of the lack of demand, which meant that even someone trying to follow the system would have a hard time.

The Little Ice Age

This is barely relevant at this stage tbh, but I included it in the video so I figured I'd talk about it a bit here. The Little Ice Age hit Asia at a different time than Europe, so the timelines don't match up completely, but most papers I've seen estimate it started in the last few years of the 16th century or the early 17th century, so it's plausible that the mid-late Ming fashions were impacted.

However it's also equally possible that the lengthening of robes got popular for a different reason, since the overlap in time period was so small. The impacts of the Little Ice Age weren't just colder climate either, it was more importantly the whole drought/famine/storms/etc. extreme climate change effects that disrupted everything else, whcih I'll talk about more in the Late Ming post.

Also since I'm looking at mingfu portraits for this, which is more of a formal thing, it makes sense that their robes are longer anyway.

The Skirt: Research & Evidence

Portraits

I'm gonna be so fr the sources for these are all over the place and the Shandong artifact organization's website has been down for like the past two weeks, so I'm having a really hard time tracking down the original sources for these, but I'll tell you what I do know about these images.

The leftmost portrait is of Lady Yu, wife of 藍銅 / Lan2 Tong2, and there's a watermark from Shandong Museum on it, so I'm guessing it was previously exhibited there, but I'm not sure if it's in their permanent collection. Lan Tong was the father of 藍章 / Lan2 Zhang1, who lived from 1453–1525CE, who was in turn the father of 藍田 / Lan2 Tian2, who lived from 1477–1555CE, whose second wife Lady Liu is depicted in the second portrait. So the second portrait is the granddaughter-in-law of the first portrait.

There isn't much information on Lan Tong, but assuming the age gap was similar to gap between Lan Zhang and Lan Tian, and assuming the wives of these men were of similar ages to them, it seems reasonable that all three generations lived during middle Ming. Lady Liu would be closer to mid-late Ming.

If Random Twitter Post is to be believed, the rightmost portrait is a portrait defaced during the Cultural Revolution, so it's very likely that the original name of the woman depicted has been lost. However, her rank appears to be the same as that of the middle portrait, and looking closely at the brushwork, I would not be surprised if the two were illustrated by the same painter at around the same time. All three wear very similar clothing, with a red round-collar robe with a badge + double-banded mamianqun.

Artifacts

There's like a hundred of these so I'm not gonna do in-depth detail on each of them, just kinda list the most relevant four out and the main features.

黃織錦絨繡裙 / huang2 zhi1 jin3 rong2 xiu4 qun2 / Yellow Brocade Embroidered Skirt

Src: 刘林,余家栋 & 许智范.(1982).江西南城明益宣王朱翊鈏夫妇合葬墓. Cultural Relics,(08),16-28+100-101.https://doi.org/10.13619/j.cnki.cn11-1532/k.1982.08.004.

Unearthed from 江西南城明益宣王朱翊鈏夫妇合葬墓 / jiang1 xi1 nan2 cheng2 ming2 yi4 xuan1 wang2 zhu1 yi4 yin3 fu1 fu4 he2 zang4 mu4 / Couple's Tomb of Yi Xuanwang and Zhu Yiyin in Nancheng, Jiangxi. Embroidered rather than woven, but has a knee + hem banding design pattern. Unlined, white cotton waistband, 87cm length, 108cm waist width. Jiajing era (1522–1566CE).

駝色纏枝蓮地鳳襴妝花緞裙 / tuo2 se4 zhan2 zhi1 lian2 di4 feng4 lan2 zhuang1 hua1 duan4 qun2 / Skirt of Brocaded Camel-Tan Damask with Interlocking Lotus Pattern Bearing Phoenix Design in the Lower Portion

Src: 北京文物精粹大系: 織繡卷, Gems of Beijing Cultural Relics Series: Textiles and Embroidery, China Press 2001, ISBN9787200042016, fig 25–27 pg 75

Unearthed from 北京618厂苇子坑明墓 / bei3 jing1 618 chang3 wei3 zi3 keng1 ming2 mu4 / Ming Tomb of Wei Zikeng at Factory 618 in Beijing. Dated to middle Ming. Has horizontal bands as well with woven phoenix designs.

裙M1:16 (it does not have a detailed name lmao)

Src: 王爲剛,張偉,周金波 & 劉偉.(2016).江蘇泰州明代劉鑑家族墓發掘簡報 The Excavation of the Tombs of Liu Jian' s Family of the Ming Dynasty in Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province.文物,(06),41-62+1. https://doi.org/10.13619/j.cnki.cn11-1532/k.2016.06.003. Fig. 9

Unearthed from 江蘇泰州明代劉鑑家族墓 / jiang1 su1 tai4 zhou1 ming2 dai4 liu2 jian4 jia1 zu2 mu4 / Tomb of Family of Liu Jian, Taizhou City, Jiangsu. Interestingly only 58.5cm long, waist width 122cm, hem length 193cm. Has two horizontal bands, qilin and cloud patterns.

葱绿地妆花纱蟒裙 / cong1 lv4 di4 zhuang1 hua1 sha1 mang3 qun2 / Bright Green Zhuanghua Gauze Mang Skirt

Src: Wikimedia Commons, 山东博物馆藏明葱绿地织金妆花纱蟒裙, Ming Dynasty Bright Green Brocaded Gauze Skirt with Gold Woven Floral and Dragon Patterns, Shandong Museum, March 2023

From 孔府舊藏 / kong3 fu2 jiu4 zang4 / Kong Family Mansion collection, heirloom piece (so not an excavated object, an heirloom passed down over generations), extremely well-preserved down to original color. 5-6 pleats on each side. Very clear knee and hem bands. Dated to Wanli era, so at the tail end of what could be considered mid-late Ming.

Design

Skirt

雙襴 / shuang1 lan2 literally means "double-banded," with the word "band" here referring to a horizontal length of multicolored pattern stretching across the skirt's fabric. 襴 / lan2 is used to refer to any number of clothing-related things that go across, typically at the bottom or lower half of a garment, so it can also be used to refer to the bottom half of a 襦 / ru2 top or the hem piece of a 襴衫 / lan2 shan1 scholar's round-collared robe.

The double-banded skirt pattern is one of the most popular mamianqun fabric pattern structures in modern times. The top band is called a 膝襴 / xi1 lan2 / "knee band" because it's at the height of the knee, and the other band is called the 底襴 / di3 lan2 / "lower band" because it's at the hem of the skirt. Since the knee band is thinner and the lower band is much thicker, this arrangement could be called 窄膝襴 + 寬底襴 / zhai3 xi1 lan2 + kuan1 di3 lan2 / "narrow knee band + wide lower band." Other combinations with a wider knee band and thinner lower band, only a knee band, only a low band, etc. also exist, but over time this combination has proved to be the most popular in the modern Hanfu movement.

Other Outfit Pieces

Cami/underlayer: 主腰 / zhu3 yao1 / "Zhuyao Bodice"

Src: 云缕心衣: 中国古代内衣文化, 潘建华, 上海古籍出版社, 2005, ISBN9787532540945

The innermost layer for all four of the Ming Dynasty sets is a 主腰 / zhu3 yao1. Bearing some resemblance to western bodices, it's a slightly more sophisticated front-opening torso garment with straps tied over the shoulder and a line of buttons down the front. It has a high back with wide straps and buttons/ties down the front. (Refer to the Early Ming Dynasty post for more details.)

Pants: 直腰褲 / zhi2 yao1 ku4 / "Straight-Waist Trousers"

Src: 王爲剛,張偉,周金波 & 劉偉.(2016).江蘇泰州明代劉鑑家族墓發掘簡報 The Excavation of the Tombs of Liu Jian' s Family of the Ming Dynasty in Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province.文物,(06),41-62+1. https://doi.org/10.13619/j.cnki.cn11-1532/k.2016.06.003. Fig. 11

The pants for all four of the Ming Dynasty sets is of the form of the 直腰褲 / zhi2 yao1 ku4 / straight-waist trousers, a very standard form of pants worn by both men and women throughout the Ming Dynasty. Shown above is an example from the same Liu Jian family tomb as the third skirt artifact shown, M1:31, a pair of lined cotton pants. (Refer to the Early Ming Dynasty post for more details.)

Shirt: 立領對襟短衫 / li4 ling3 dui4 jin4 duan3 shan1 / "Standing Collar Parallel Lapel Short Top"

Src: 刘林,余家栋 & 许智范.(1982).江西南城明益宣王朱翊鈏夫妇合葬墓. Cultural Relics,(08),16-28+100-101.https://doi.org/10.13619/j.cnki.cn11-1532/k.1982.08.004. The The standing collar emerged in the last half of the Ming Dynasty, a variation from the basic cross-collar. This is something that the hanfu community has been arguing about recently because... idk some people just like looking for trouble, but yeah basically it's another variation of inner-garment usually only found in the Ming Dynasty. It's not quite the same as the Qing Dynasty standing collar or mandarin collar. Standing collars or vertical collars can also come in crossed or parallel lapel versions; the parallel lapel version is more commonly seen in innerwear. Our design has a red rayon body with a quiver-sleeve shape and bead buttons down the front. The inside of the collar is lined with teal, so it can be worn flipped down to expose the color if you want.

Coat: 圓領大襟補服 / yuan2 ling3 da4 jin4 bu3 fu2 / "Round Collar Overlapping Lapel Badge Robe"

Src: 盐池冯记圈明墓, 宁夏文物考古研究所, 科学出版社, 2010, ISBN9787030289148, 彩版68

The round collar top or robe has evolved all the way from Tang to Ming. Women's round-collar robes typically don't have 擺 / bai3 or protruding flaps on each side. These are usually considered slightly more formal outerwear garments, with the buzi we talked about earlier on the front and back. Reflecting the discussion on the social phenomenon of the mid-late Ming Dynasty from earlier, the design for the buzi here is of a five-clawed 龍 / long2 dragon, which would historically be reserved for the emperor and only the emperor—this would be a unique restriction case that would almost never be violated. We are, however, in the present day where we can wear whatever we want, so I figured I'd basically max out the blasphemy to represent this phenomenon. The style of the buzi is also very much modernized and not meant to mimic a Ming or Qing style buzi, it's just a continuation of the white dragon theme from Journey to the West.

Other Styling

Makeup was still mostly similar, but we start to see the lip shape getting even thinner. The eyebrows also start to flatten out to almost a straight line rather than the arched look from previous time periods.

Hair continued on with the structure of the 三綹頭 / san1 liu3 tou2 / three-strand hairstyle. The mingfu portraits would've had a different kind of hairstyle mandated by, once again, fashion restrictions for official's wives, but for this project we went with another 三綹頭 variation, this time with a simpler doubled-up swoop style in the back.

Accessories

Hair accessories were once again 纏花 / chan2 hua1 / “wrapped silk” flower hair pins sponsored by the Forbidden Boutique (ig: @/forbidden_boutique), a small business selling handmade traditional jewelry and hair accessories based in LA. This traditional technique is estimated to have originated in the Ming Dynasty and involves wrapping silk threads around paper petal forms and wire to create flowers. We used two flower clips for this one, purple and light pink.

Earrings: Sooooooooo full disclosure there were originally gonna be earrings for this set but I Straight Up Forgot To Put Them On and only noticed when we got to the rotating shots, so like. Too late. Uh, here's a photo of them anyway, the pair on the right. These were also laser-cut and based on a carved jade artifact. I spent like several hours sanding the edges to make them look nice and then forgot to use them at all ;-;

Sources

I find this a pivotal time period for the Ming Dynasty so apart from the main spreadsheet I'm gonna point out a few sources that I think are especially good here.

Superfluous things: material culture and social status in early modern China by Craig Clunas, slightly older but extremely good discussion on material culture in the Ming Dynasty

Wearing the hat of loyalty: imperial power and dress reform in Ming Dynasty China by Buyun Chen

Dressing the state, dressing the society: Ritual, morality, and conspicuous consumption in Ming dynasty China by Yuan Zujie

Historical text: 大明會典, Wanli Era, 61st section

Historical text: 明史, 43rd section, translated

Works Cited Database [MMQ]

[redsugarx]

Evolution of the Mamianqun: Late Ming

Nav: Presentation // Intro // Southern Song 南宋 // Yuan 蒙元 // Early Ming 明初 // Mid-Early Ming 明中前 // Mid-Late Ming 明中後 // Late Ming 晚明 // Fabrics Pt 1 // Fabrics Pt 2 // Misc Fun Facts // Conclusion

Model: Tiona Zeng (ig: @/tinazzeng), MAISON at Yale

Background

Terminology

First some terminology clarifications. Late Ming can refer to two periods: 晚明 and 明末. 

晚明 is the more literal translation of Late Ming. It usually refers to the period starting either at the beginning or middle of the Wanli era, going until the end of the Ming Dynasty where it gets taken over by the Qing. This period is sectioned out because it includes the gradual decline of the dynasty.

明末 more literally means ending Ming, referring to  only the last few years of the dynasty, from about 1620 onwards, when the dynasty was pretty much on its deathbed. It may or may not include Southern Ming, also called 後明/hou4 ming2/“later/after/back Ming,” a tiny remnant of the Ming that hung around for a bit after the fall of the dynasty, which coexisted with the first few years of the Qing Dynasty.

For the purpose of this project, though, the last look focuses on the late Ming period starting from the mid-Wanli era and going until the official end of the dynasty in 1644, because Late Ming has established itself in the modern Hanfu community as its own popular sub-aesthetic. Late Ming style typically consists of long, minimalistic tops, very wide sleeves, and delicate ornamentation in very few select spots.

A note, though: while the Late Ming style as referred to in today's hanfu community means one thing, it's important to remember that "late Ming" actually lasted quite a long time, and moreover that it was especially known for how quickly trends changed at this time. 余懷/Yu Huai, a writer who lived from 1616–1695CE, stated that "衫之短長, 袖之大小, 隨時變易, 見者謂時世粧也.” or "the length of their robes, the size of their sleeves, all of these changed completely randomly, and these were called 'fashion' by those who saw it."

It's extremely likely that what we call Late Ming style today is only one small part of what was trendy at this time; there is no "Late Ming Style" in history. We know it was at least trendy at one point during Late Ming, but it's far from representative of the whole period in general. Beyond that, there were many conflicting opinions about fashion going on at the same time: some people liked the flashy stuff, some people thought minimalism was better, some people were super progressive in ushering in new trends, others thought that these new trends would upset the balance of nature.

So just keep in mind that when we say Late Ming style, we're referring to the specific style that the hanfu community calls "Late Ming style," which we know existed at some point for some people during Late Ming, but was almost definitely not ubiquitous throughout the time period.

The Invention of Taste

Part of the possible reason for the emergence of minimalism was the idea of tastefulness, which rose in opposition to the flashy, flamboyant style of middle Ming. I talked about the problem of mimicry in the previous post, how anyone with money could now afford extravagant fabric and fashion to look affluent and well-off, and the idea of conspicuous consumption, where your rank and social credit came from your material possessions.

“True” nobles from historically important households were very unhappy about this—they looked down on merchants and artisans as, like, “common people,” as opposed to their well-connected, socially superior families. Scholars, gentlemen, etc. held similar views. They needed a different way to distinguish themselves from the newly rich.

That distinguishing factor was taste. As a concept, it’s a set of… limitations, so to speak, on these material objects—and how to use or display them—exclusive to people with “good upbringing;” aka basically a set of symbolic rules that only the noble families would know about. Boundless extravagance from new money was labeled as superficial, gaudy and excessive, or in other words, distasteful. (We definitely have a similar concept of sophistication vs trashy flashiness today.)

That’s how I'm led to believe that the minimalistic but grand Late Ming style arose: they still wanted to show that they were well-off—super big robes that required lots of fabric to make, large sleeves that meant you had servants to do things for you, etc.—but the designs on them were very simple and elegant, with a lot of solid colors or subtle jacquard patterns, nowhere near as flashy as the mid-early Ming trends. In this way the “true” aristocrats distinguished themselves from the “fake” wealthy people: the real noble families were tasteful and sophisticated, while the overly gaudy merchants were just playing at looking high-class while not truly being from noble, educated, cultured households.

And again—this is only one sub-style, like cottagecore or lolita or dark academia, that was well-liked during this time period. Just think about how fast trends change now. Massively flashy gold embellished coats and stuff definitely existed at the same time.

The Little Ice Age

Note: most of the information references The Little Ice Age and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty: A Review, by Fan Ka-Wai. It is publicly available with extensive references. Refer to sources spreadsheet at the bottom of this post for more.

The Little Ice Age hit worst in late Ming, stirring up even more unrest among the people. It hit during "the late 16th century to the end of the 17th century" (Fan Ka-Wai, The Little Ice Age and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty). Again, it wasn’t just the weather being colder—the LIA came with a whole host of issues related to rapid climate change, similar to (though opposite of?) global warming today: increased storms, weak summer monsoons, weather phenomena like El Niño, etc. China being a largely agricultural economy, the climate effects were devastating for most people. Probably the biggest effect was the "megadrought" that started in 1637, worsened in 1641 by the eruption of Mount Parker (among other volcanic eruptions), causing plague, famine, and general chaos.

We’ve seen before that the more anxious people get, the bigger the class divide gets. It’s happening today, too: to cope with the sense of impending doom, people turn to other things to take up their thoughts: material possessions, gossip, etc. Late Ming was no stranger to this. In addition, the colder temperatures encouraged the lengthening of tops into ankle or floor-length robes, under which the hem of a skirt could peek through. As a result, skirt decorations migrated to the bottom of the skirt (since the rest of it would be covered anyway).

We also see an increase in the popularity of embroidery on skirts here. I don't know the exact reason for this but I would guess that it's a more economical way of adding decoration to only a very small part of the skirt, rather than something all-over.

The Fall of Ming

I won't pretend to be in expert on the ending Ming/early Qing period; in fact it's probably one of the periods I know least about (in proportion to the amount of available info about it) because I generally don't really like the aesthetic of this time period, which is heavily Qing-influenced, so I haven't looked into it as much.

But from what I have seen, the factors contributing to the fall of a Ming as a whole were largely:

Natural effects from the LIA, as discussed above, causing "famine, drought, locusts" (Fan 2023)

Internal rebellion, from people unhappy with the government, especially because of the materialistic class war going on + the crop failures from the LIA

Inter-ethnic conflict, possibly made worse by the culture thing

Persistent invasion from the Manchus

People still don't really agree on which one/ones contributed most; many don't agree on the LIA being a factor because it should've equally affected the Manchus (I see the point but I still think it made people Not Happy, so I put it there anyway). I couldn't presume to tell you which I think was the most impactful either; I don't know enough to form much of an opinion. At the end of the day, though, I'm tempted to blame capitalism, because why not?

The Skirt: Research & Evidence

Artifacts

Various Skirts From 嘉興王店李家墳明墓 / jia1 xing4 wang2 dian4 li3 jia1 fen2 ming2 mu4 / Li Family Mausoleum in Wangdian, Jiaxing

Src: “梅里雲裳”明代服飾形象復原系列作品, 蔣玉秋, 北京服裝學院美術學院/中國絲綢博物館, various exacavation images from p7-10 (2022?) pdf

The Li Family Mausoleum in Jiaxing consists of four tombs labeled M1, M2, M3, and M4. From the tomb epitaphs it was determined that M2 belonged to 李湘 / Li3 Xiang1, M3 belonged to his principal wife with an unknown surname, M1 belonged to a secondary wife whose surname was 陳 / chen2, and M4 to another wife with the surname 徐 / xu3. As a result, three of the four tombs contained various women's clothing articles that we can examine for a look into late Ming fashion.

Out of these we know that Madam Chen died when she was 92 years old in the seventeenth year of the Wanli era, which would've been 1589. We don't know exactly when the other tombs were buried, but the report says it was probably before Madam Chen because her epitaph says she was entombed "to the left of the tomb of her late husband," so he must have already been deceased.

The most intact skirt artifacts were found in M1 and M3, so Madam Chen and unknown-surname-principal-wife's tombs.

Src: 嘉興王店李家墳明墓清理報告, 吳海紅, 嘉興博物館，彩插3，圖5、6，p53（2009）

Above are artifacts M3:17 and M1:24, screenshotted from a scan of the initial excavation report's colored print section, both of which have gold-thread woven decoration confined to the bottom of the skirt.

Src: “梅里雲裳”明代服飾形象復原系列作品, 蔣玉秋, 北京服裝學院美術學院/中國絲綢博物館, 四季花蜂蝶绸裙 p25-26 (2022?) pdf

Another artifact restored from tomb M4, the 四季花蜂蝶绸裙 / si4 ji4 hua1 feng1 die2 chou2 qun2 / Four Seasons Flowers, Bees & Birds Silk Skirt, was documented in a restoration report, with the technical line drawing included. You can see that the pleats are not at all trapezoidal, and the waistband is completely straight, in opposition to the flared shape of the earlier mamianqun. This skirt has a damask floral pattern for most of the body and a gold-threaded yingluo/beaded jewelry pattern decoration concentrated at the bottom.

白色暗花紗繡鳥紋裙 / bai2 se4 an4 hua1 sha1 xiu4 niao3 wen2 qun2 / White Organza Embroidered Bird Pattern Skirt

Src: 白色暗花纱绣花鸟纹裙, Baidu

From 孔府舊藏 / kong3 fu2 jiu4 zang4 / Kong Family Mansion collection, heirloom piece (so not an excavated object, an heirloom passed down over generations). Known colloquially in the hanfu community as 花鳥裙 / hua1 niao3 qun2 / "flowers and birds skirt," super popular recreation style now. 3-4 wide pleats on each side, slightly trapezoidal shape but much less pronounced curvature than middle Ming.

Not dated to a particular part of Ming, but given context and trends I would say it's very likely to have been from late Ming: we know that white skirts were one (of many) trend during late Ming, and that embroidery briefly overtook woven decoration.

Design

Skirt

低欄 / di3 lan2 directly translates to "lower lan" (refer to prev post for the definition of a lan), aka the band of patterning located near the hem of the skirt, which can peek out from the bottom of a longer robe/top. We know that this was a very popular arrangement during Late Ming (although many arrangements were simultaneously popular, so it's difficult to relegate any particular style to a particular period).

In addition, the pleats on this design are straight/parallel, not arranged in a trapezoidal sunburst pattern, leading to a straighter horizontal waist band with less curvature to it. Very early mamianqun had straight-shape pleats as well, but the trapezoidal silhouette took over in popularity for most of middle Ming. Straighter pleats made a comeback because they fit better inside of the long robes, whereas the trapezoidal skirts—which widen out from the waistband—tend to protrude outwards and ruin the shape of the top.

This skirt design has six pairs of pleats per side (again higher than average number historically, but more commonplace for the modern hanfu community).

Other Outfit Pieces

Cami/underlayer: 主腰 / zhu3 yao1 / "Zhuyao Bodice"

Src: "Leisurely Life of a Lady," 孫璜 Sun Huang, mid-17th century, Qing Dynasty, Freer Gallery of Art Collection

The innermost layer for all four of the Ming Dynasty sets is a 主腰 / zhu3 yao1. Bearing some resemblance to western bodices, it's a slightly more sophisticated front-opening torso garment with straps tied over the shoulder and a line of buttons (or ties) down the front. Later on sleeveless versions may or may not have existed (there's one artifact floating around but it's unclear if the straps just rotted off). Shown above is a painting from the early Qing Dynasty by Sun Huang, formerly attributed to famous Ming Dynasty painter Qiu Ying. While the painting was made during the Qing Dynasty, it was made very early on during Qing by a Han painter, and it depicts Han women dressed in extremel characteristic late Ming clothing (as is common for paintings of ladies—often they are clothed in outfits from previous time periods, it's a genre norm). The two women in the painting are shown wearing a red zhuyao under a longer sheer robe, a very common summer fashion choice of the time. (Refer to the Early Ming Dynasty post for more details.)

Pants: 直腰褲 / zhi2 yao1 ku4 / "Straight-Waist Trousers"

Src: Yellow plain damask trousers, 334, 大明衣冠論壇, pg 288

The pants for all four of the Ming Dynasty sets is of the form of the 直腰褲 / zhi2 yao1 ku4 / straight-waist trousers, a very standard form of pants worn by both men and women throughout the Ming Dynasty. Shown above is an example from the Dingling mausoleum of the Wanli emperor. (Refer to the Early Ming Dynasty post for more details.)

Shirt: 無領衫 / wu2 ling3 shan1 / "Collar-less Top"

The so-called 'collar-less' top is named that way because it lacks a separate collar piece/strip/rectangle that's pieced together with the body of the garment; instead, the raw edge of the collar area is just enclosed with bias tape. However, the result is remarkably similar to the round collar parallel-lapel shirt, just with a very thin collar piece; as a result, it's also referred to as 窄圓領 / zhai3 yuan2 ling3 / narrow round collar. Our design has a red rayon body with teal collar binding and placket, plus agate bead buttons running down the front.

Coat: 立領斜襟長襖 / li4 ling3 xie2 jin1 chang2 ao3 / "Standing Collar Diagonal Lapel Robe"

Src: 明暗云纹白罗长衫, 文物山東, 山東博物館

While similar to the mandarin collar, the standing collar is a separate collar type hailing from the Ming Dynasty. The popular Late Ming aesthetic often features the long standing collar robe with a diagonal lapel going from the center of the collar to the side of the body, often paired with a very long length and large sleeves, as embodied by the artifact shown above from the Shandong Provincial Museum. One feature of Ming Dynasty wide sleeves is that the front of the sleeves are almost always sewn closed, leaving only a small opening at the wrist, which is highlighted in our design by a gold piping, 圈金/quan1 jin1/'gold outline.' Our design is a dark inky rayon-polyester blend lined with a pale teal polyester-cotton-silk blend. The inside of the collar is lined with a red rayon, which can be folded down for a slightly shorter two-tone collar, also outlined in gold.

Other Styling

L: 明代帝后半身像（二）　冊　孝靖皇后, Empress Xiaojing, 中畫000327N000000006, National Palace Museum Collection // R: 明代帝后半身像（二）　冊　孝定皇后, Empress Xiaoding, 中畫000327N000000004, National Palace Museum Collection

Makeup is where you start to see the eyebrows starting to droop at the outer ends—not only are they pretty much completely flattened out with no arch at all, the outer half curves downward, giving you this sort of permanently-slightly-disappointed look. The lips also continue to take on a flatter and thinner shape. The petal shape is a lip shape that was at least existent during Late Ming—it's a bit more exaggerated than the thinner historical shape, which is shown above in the empress portraits of the Xiaojing Empress, the wife of the Wanli Emperor, and the Xiaoding Empress/Empress Dowager, his mother.

I lowkey can't find where I got this painting from but from what I remember it should be a Qing dynasty painting of Han women sitting around a table playing some sort of card or other gambling game, I think in an opium den or something???? If someone else manages to find it lmk lol but I know there's more than one version of it, I just for the life of me I can't track it down, all the women in the painting have this hairstyle so it's a really good example

Hair was based on the 牡丹頭 / mu3 dan1 tou2 / "peony head" hairstyle (idk why it's called that either tbh), which was a look that imo looked very similar to a beehive or pouf where the hair was coiffed with extra volume on top and hair combed directly back from the hairline. This lasted from late Ming into ending Ming and (I think? Not sure about this one) early Qing as well, with varying degrees of exaggeratedness from a slight bump to a prominent Marie Antoinette-style high roll. We kept it kind of in the middle for this one.

Accessories

Hair accessories were once again 纏花 / chan2 hua1 / “wrapped silk” flower hair pins sponsored by the Forbidden Boutique (ig: @/forbidden_boutique), a small business selling handmade traditional jewelry and hair accessories based in LA. This traditional technique is estimated to have originated in the Ming Dynasty and involves wrapping silk threads around paper petal forms and wire to create flowers. The one shown is actually a brooch that I managed to work into the hair.

Src: 明代帝后半身像（二）　冊　孝純皇后, Empress Xiaochun, 中畫000327N000000008, National Palace Museum Collection

Earrings: The five-petal plum blossom earrings I made here were based on the pearl petal flower earrings worn by some of the later empresses in their portraits. The photo on the right above is a portrait of the Xiaochun Empress/Empress Dowager, the mother of the Chongzhen Emperor, the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, in which she is wearing similar earrings. These took the most effort to make out of all of the pairs of earrings.

Src: 金脚宝玉佛面环 上海肇嘉浜路打浦桥明代顾姓族墓出土

The original most likely had a stamped or cut metal base that the gemstones were then welded or glued onto; for my version, I twisted the frame out of 18 gauge brass jewelry wire (essentially just made 5 connected double-layered loops with round-nose pliers and then bent then around each other until the end loops met in a plum blossom shape). Then I used 28 gauge brass wire to wrap the pearl beads onto the frame, plus a tiny red bicone that I just had laying around for the center.

The longer pearl strands are just pearl beads threaded onto a head pin, then attached to the flower frame. The last pearl in the center one is slightly larger than the rest.

-

Okay we're almost done! Just a fabric design post + concluding comments left! Also sorry for lack of pics in the first half making it really dense lol, the 30 image limit is lowkey killing me

Works Cited Database [MMQ]

^ srces wip for late ming at time of post (ill add them in gradually in the next few days)

[redsugarx]

Evolution of the Mamianqun 馬面演變 2026 [Official]

Nav: Presentation // Intro // Southern Song 南宋 // Yuan 蒙元 // Early Ming 明初 // Mid-Early Ming 明中前 // Mid-Late Ming 明中後 // Late Ming 晚明 // Fabrics Pt 1 // Fabrics Pt 2 // Misc Fun Facts // Conclusion

(Will put video text in here in highlightable text form when I have time)

Official caption:

In celebration of the 2026 Year of the Horse, Cloud9 Hanfu Studio (九雲閣) presents our first ever video project: Evolution of the Mamianqun (馬面裙之演變), a look through the ages at how one of the most popular and beloved styles of hanfu—the mamianqun (馬面裙) or "horse-faced skirt"—transformed throughout the Song, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties. We hope you enjoy this journey through history with Cloud9!

0:00 - Intro

0:35 - Song Dynasty

2:18 - Yuan Dynasty

3:50 - Early Ming Dynasty

5:21 - Mid-Early Ming Dynasty

7:01 - Mid-Late Ming Dynasty

8:19 - Late Ming Dynasty

If any of the hanfu sets in this video catch your eye, all are available for purchase (always custom-sized to fit you and made to order!) exclusively at our Etsy shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/cloud9hanfu

Officially sponsored by: @lizistudio@forbidden_boutique 💎

The Team (thank you!!!): 🎬 Direction: @[email protected]@chlobaltblue 💃 Models: @emi1y_chang@tinazzeng@maisonatyale 👗 Clothing & Jewelry: @[email protected] 💄 Makeup: @chlobaltblue@[email protected] 💆‍♀️ Hairstyling: @lizistudiola 🎥 Film & Edit: @zerovsabre@sokaimaika@minibober 🎼 Music: @premiumbeat@[email protected] 🌸 Hair Accessories: @forbidden_boutique ❤️ Backstage Assistance: @[email protected]

[redsugarx]

Evolution of the Mamianqun: Conclusion

Nav: Presentation // Intro // Southern Song 南宋 // Yuan 蒙元 // Early Ming 明初 // Mid-Early Ming 明中前 // Mid-Late Ming 明中後 // Late Ming 晚明 // Fabrics Pt 1 // Fabrics Pt 2 // Misc Fun Facts // Conclusion

If you thought this was gonna be a short conclusion you were WRONG I am doing REFLECTIONS(tm) There will be two parts: (1) Things That Were Good and (2) Things That Were Bad! The second part will be significantly longer than the first part because it is more detailed but overall it was a good experience I promise!!!!!!!

(This is probably not as fun to read for people but it is mostly an exercise in reflection. Also if you want to see the sheer amount of ways things like this can go wrong and feel better about yourself, this is a good place to look)

As viewer tax here is @/qiuqiuchinese's instagram reel on the behind the scenes of the project (the person she's interviewing is my older sister Yulan, I'm the one that pops in for like 2 seconds at 1:14 with a mask on cuz I'm shy) (also the captions say 姐姐 but I am Yulan's younger sibling by 6 years, so it should be 妹妹)

Things That Were Good

Massive coincidence while we were looking for videographers: a few days before deciding, Rachel (@/qiuqiuchinese) reached out to us looking to collab because she was going to be in Southern Cal (she lives there now but she used to be based in Boston). She mentioned that her husband happens to be a videographer by trade, and it turned out that they were in town and free at the exact right time to shoot this video with us, so it ended up being a collab!

Videography was a 100% new thing for me; I'd never done a project anything like this. To come up with the idea almost a year and a half before doing this project, and step-by-step bring it to life, is a really rewarding process, though it was very rocky and frustrating most of the time. I learned a lot from going through all the grueling parts of the project, and even though a bunch of stuff went wrong and it took SO much of my time and energy over the past year, I'm glad I did it and I'm happy with the results.

Chef's kiss to the models; they were absolutely perfect for their looks. Having modeled myself I really admire their tenacity—I start twitching thirty minutes into being in the makeup chair; these two had to sit for upwards of two hours a look, over and over and over again. Even when they weren't the ones being styled, they were off-stage on steaming and organizing duty, which were a huge help to keeping things running smoothly. My personal favorites were Tiona in the mid-early Ming look and Emily in the Song look.

Yulan's makeup skills keep getting better every time—she was unsure about being able to pull off a more classical makeup look at first, because her makeup work usually leans more modern, but she pulled it off beautifully following the notes I gave her and the end result looks fantastic. Because she was involved in both the styling and the detail shot maneuvering parts of the shoot, she was the only person on set who had practically zero breaks over the course of each ten-hour day, and I'm astonished at how energetic she was able to stay (I got the chill directing job sitting on the side yelling at people for most of the time and I was still dead by the end of each day).

Lizi from Lizi Studio was also a godsend; she sponsored a bunch of stuff for us including the studio and a bunch of props, and her hairstyling skills are unparalleled. We 100% couldn't have pulled this off without her and it was wonderful to get to know someone else in Cali seriously pursuing hanfu.

Kevin (Yulan's bf) did so much driving back and forth for us, I'm super grateful that he was able to come. Everyone was busy on set and we sent him to get food, drinks, forgotten keys, forgotten items, etc. like fifty times over the course of the day; even though he was rarely on set we still managed to keep him busy most of the time.

I think I can add Premiere Pro to my resume skills now, given that I basically learned the program from zero over the course of the editing shenanigans

Things That Were Bad

Design & Manufacturing (Tops)

Switched fabrics halfway through because the lighter teal was too bright and didn't match the outside well enough (had to remake 3-4 garments)

Made the earlier time period tops ~10-20cm too long for the effect that I wanted, had to remake (had to remake 4-5 garments)

One of the garments got messed up and the wrong fabric was used in the wrong place (remade 1 garment)

Changed a bunch of trims on the Song beizi like three times cuz it didn't look right

Buzi was wider than most machines had the capability of weaving without repeats, took forever to get one that could do it

Design & Manufacturing (Skirts)

In the process of trying to figure out how to manufacture woven-on-demand mamianqun fabric, reached out to like 50+ workshops, actually went through and tried 6 different ones, and ended up with 3 viable ones (aka spent SO MUCH money)

Initial teal color was too dark, had to exchange for a different thread color

Typically two kinds of gold filaments can be used for the fabric: round or flat, flat looked better initially on early fabric samples but the machine of the fabric workshop we went with could only handle round so we had to switch to round again

Warehouse that I was storing fabric in was unfamiliar with how mamianqun fabric worked and kept cutting the roll at the wrong place when distributing fabric to the tailors x-x

Last-minute added an extra gold outline to the design of the longma mane and tail to help add a bit of detail in, had to get all three of the patterned skirt digitizations updated, it was a huge hassle and huge cost and I lowkey regret doing it because tbh you can barely see the outline anyway

The damask from one factory was different from another, so the black damask parts of the Late Ming skirt used for the video looks different from the rest because it was woven with a different technique (I had a replacement made but it didn't get here in time)

Shooting (Transportation)

The BART got rerouted on my way to the airport—I think it was something about construction or power outages, but they diverted in a different direction and told people to get out and wait for the next train which was half an hour away. I had to get out in Oakland and call a Lyft, but the traffic was really bad and I still didn’t make it on time and had to reschedule my flight for later in the day. I did get there eventually thankfully

So much airplane trouble on Yulan's end... she was supposed to get here at 5pm, she didn't end up getting to the airbnb until like 2am that night

At the end of the second day, we left the studio and went to drop off Emily at her house first, then went home to our airbnb. Except, instead of the airbnb's address, Kevin accidentally put the address of the studio into the GPS again so we drove all the way back to the studio and didn't realize until we pulled into the parking lot. And then had to drive all the way back again

Shooting (Set & Lighting)

Time mismanagement on two days on set: We had two days for this, 12/21 and 12/22. We originally had three days planned, but it would have required me to go straight from taking my last midterm to the airport, and it would’ve been really really tight with very little wiggle room, and flights get canceled all the time; we decided not to test our luck, but it resulted in things getting really really tight during shooting

Like 3/4 of the first day was spent setting up the set. Partially because I was picky, partially because we hadn’t done this before. We had originally planned to do three looks on day one and three looks on day two, but we had to make it 2+4 instead because we’d been on set for more than ten hours at that point

I hadn’t brought any fishing line and the studio lost theirs, so I resorted to using an elastic cord I usually use for hair. This was an extremely non-ideal material to use: it sagged under weight (duh) and made it nearly impossible to position the scrolls accurately. I spent like two hours on a ladder trying to make it work. We eventually found the fishing line but it was too late by then lol

The power cut out like three times in the middle of filming—the lights were consuming a lot of energy and the circuit breaker must’ve gotten tripped. Unfortunately it was in a big office building and the circuit breaker was elsewhere in the building where we didn’t have access, so we had to call people to come reset it; we ended up connecting the lights to a separate power generator of their own

On the first day we had an iPad that mirrored the camera so that we could see how everything looked while being elsewhere in the room. On the second day we forgot to bring it so we were Blind (we tried with Yulan's phone but it was way too small)

Closeup shots ended up kinda blurry :(

Shooting (Actual Shooting)

Yulan forgot to bring black leggings so she was in a skirt (originally we wanted all non-models in all black so we wouldn't distract) and therefore had a knee cameo in the skirt shots for some of them lol

On the first day we literally didn't know wtf we were doing and didn't get enough detail shots, ended up having to manipulate a lot in editing to make up for it

A lot of the closeup shots ended up out of focus but there wasn't enough time to reshoot

The spinning shots (affectionately termed "rotisserie chicken shots," i shit you not that's just what we called it the whole time while on set like "okay time to do the rotisserie shot") were done on a turntable that could only go really really slowly, so the models had to do the mannequin challenge while spinning

^ they did a good job but their eyeballs could only move in twitches and not completely smoothly (normal ofc) so it can be a little distracting on screen

Tiona accidentally knocked over the screen walking behind it while recording once, had to reposition everything else as closely as possible

Models had never done hanfu bows before, the first few especially on day 1 were really really awkward looking (they got a lot better as time progressed though)

On the second day while we were shooting the Early Ming makeup sequence, Emily suddenly got dizzy and almost passed out. We lowkey still don't know what happened, but she completely recovered after lying down for a few minutes and getting some water, and she was completely fine the rest of the day (we were super worried and constantly asking).

Shooting (Styling)

Emily's hair ended up being too short to do the swallowtail hairstyle on so we had to improvise and finish off the back of her hair in a different way for her looks

Yuan Dynasty ribbon was way too long, should've gotten something like half the length to get the look right

For Song, initially had pants tucked into the socks (bc that's more traditional), but then I decided that was ugly and untucked them for the subsequent ones, which resulted in a really weird inconsistency but it was too late to go back and refilm the Song Dynasty one

Couldn't find a matte highlighter on the first day, everything people had was sparkly (which doesn't look very historical). I ended up bringing my personal palette on the second day and they used that for the later looks

Tiona was lowkey like half sick the whole time (like almost recovered but not quite) (it's ok she still looked beautiful though)

The sponsored hair accessories had to keep their price tags on so we did our best to hide them in the hair but they still showed up in some parts

The beads kept falling off my diy deerskin crown lmaooo (we glued em back on with hot glue though)

Editing

Getting the footage was a Hassle because there was So Much, had to get everything onto a hard drive and wait for it to be shipped over

Editing software mismatch, not everyone was using the same one x-x there were like 4 different programs involved, so much work went down the drain

Lots of communication errors because... isn't there always?

Had to drop a lot of money to bring in a last-minute editor to help smooth a bunch of things out in the span of like 24 hours (she did awesome though and stayed up till like 4/5am with us to get it right)

Still ended up having to do SO much ourselves over Premiere

Music was lowkey not figured out until the last second (thats lowkey on me rip but there was a lot of other stuff going on and it just kind of wasnt a priority. Until it was. Oops) We ended up using free music which... I'll be honest I don't really like it very much but it was the best that we could get that was non-AI

All of this made our post deadline move like 5 times (it was supposed to be release on LNY eve, then LNY, then Lantern Festival, then we gave up on doing it on a holiday and went a day over, and then since it wasn't a holiday anyway we went another day over... etc etc etc)

Took us three days to upload the final video because Yulan was in the middle of the goddamn ocean with shitty wifi

List of things that I was going to include but ended up nixing because there wasn't enough time/it got lost in the rush

Kept forgetting to switch out the scrolls in the background, nixed two of the paintings (I had each one matched up with significance and time period and everything hhh)

Forgot to put the earrings on for mid-late Ming ;-; Switched out the sequence because of that, unfortunately didn't match up quite as well chronologically as we hoped but oh well

Was originally going to put a petticoat under the mid-early Ming skirt for the rotisserie shot to show what the horse-hair skirt might have looked like, but ran out of time

More detail shots, especially for the first two looks

Beauty shots (of the makeup after it was finished) after the first two time periods

Fur stole as accessory on Late Ming to represent the onset of the Little Ice Age

Different shoes for each look (scrapped this one early on because the shoe selection is already so limited)

Different pants from different eras for each look (also scrapped this one early on because almost nobody knows how to make the Jiajing and Qianshi pants that would've represented the other eras, and anyway the structure of the Dingling pants did exist throughout all of Ming anyway so it wasn't worth the extra trouble since the pants weren't the point anyway)

We were gonna try to fit in a music collab but it didn't work out because the timing was too late

(bonus pic of me and my sister hiding behind Tiona's late ming sleeves to finish out the series)

May or may not add an extra behind the scenes post to the end of this, but otherwise consider this project background series finished :)

[redsugarx]

Deerskin Crown 鹿胎冠

I DIY'd some accessories for the Evolution of the Mamianqun project—one of them was the 鹿胎冠 / lu4 tai1 guan1 / deerskin crown or headpiece that was used for the southern Song Dynasty look. This is just some documentation on the (kinda scuffed) design & fabrication process.

What is a 鹿胎冠?

A 冠 or guan is a headpiece worn on the head—you could reasonably translate it to hat, crown, crest, etc. Men and women both wore guan throughout most of ancient Chinese history, though different styles were popular for different time periods and different people. Guan were especially popular during the Song Dynasty, with materials and shapes getting more and more exaggerated as time went on.

鹿胎冠, also called 小鹿冠/xiao3 lu4 guan1/"little deer headpieces," are 冠 made of deerskin/deer hide. From what I understand from the name these would be made specifically from fetal deer—I assume this is because they wanted to use the dappled pattern on the fur that disappears as the deer matures, though functionally I'm not really sure why fawns wouldn't work as well.

If you want to see the nitty gritty research stuff with all the sources, stick around until the last section of this post—I put it at the end so people don't get immediately bored by the citations and stuff.

L: 大萌制 // R: 明州风物

A few stores in China have made 鹿胎冠, but they're not super popular styles, so they're pretty hard to find (and honestly kind of pricey). I figured I'd try my hand at making my own.

Construction Process

First let’s look out how guan are usually made these days. In ancient China they probably would’ve been carved, cast, leather worked, etc. These days, probably in the name of accessibility, guan are often 3D printed, and they look something like this. 

L: 山房春 // R: 月栖林

I do have access to a 3D printer, but I’m really only trained in technical CAD and I really didn’t want to do sculptural stuff in Solidworks (one of these days I’ll learn Blender), so I went the crafty route instead.

This was done pretty quickly between classes with random stuff I had lying down. For the base, I used an empty roll of packaging tape that I had just used up. 

I punched two holes in it with scissors, a utility knife, and a screwdriver (in that order lmao). This is where the hairpins to hold the guan in place will go.  This was a significantly longer undertaking than it sounds.

For the main panels, I used the lid of a shoebox I had lying around. I think it was a heavyweight cardstock, somewhere between cardboard and like… greeting card cardstock. 

I freehanded a curve on some folded up graph paper to make sure it would be symmetrical, cut it out as a pattern, and traced it onto the inside of the shoebox lid.

Once I cut those out I bent them a little bit to give them some curvature. This was partially just for the aesthetic and partially so that it would mold to the curvature of the packaging tape core when I attached it:

Next I attached the deerskin-patterned fabric to the cardstock pieces. I got the fabric off Etsy, it’s a minky fleece deer print that’s honestly not super realistic (that is absolutely not what deer hide looks like lmao) but it’d work for my purposes—again this was a DIY thing so it didn’t have to be perfect; worst case we don’t end up using it. 

I used a razor blade to cut the backing a little bit bigger than each of the cardstock pieces. Probably anyone who’s worked with fur before knows this, but if you try to cut fur with scissors you’ll end up with a mountain of loose fluff that you severed in the process; instead you’re supposed to flip the fabric around and cut only through the backing with a knife or razor blade. Even then I had fluff particles flying around my kitchen for a week lol

I hot glued the cardstock pieces convex face down to the back of the fabric, then folded the edges over and glued them. It was a pretty messy process, especially since I didn’t notch any of it around the curve, but the thickness of the fluff kind of hid it from the outside anyway.

For the exposed sides of the packaging tape core, I cut out two rectangles of fabric to wrap around the sides. I punched holes in the fabric to clear the hairpin hole—I just made an X with the razor blade and made sure I could poke the hairpin through— and then did a circle around the hole with hot glue to support it structurally and make sure it didn’t collapse on itself.

I folded this over the top edge of the base, stuck the hairpin through to make sure all the holes were aligned, and then glued down the edges.

Next step is to put the two cardstock pieces on. I wanted them to lean outwards a little bit, so that the top was a little wider than the bottom, so to achieve this effect I added a strip of hot glue to the top edge of the base to prop the cardstock up and form an angle, like a shim. This took a few rounds of hot gluing/waiting for it to dry/putting another layer on top to increase its thickness and exaggerate the angle a bit more. 

It’s sort of hard to see with all the fur, but the effect when I glued on the front and back pieces was that because the bottom was closer to the base than the top, they leaned outwards at a slight angle.

At this point I got tired and decided to resume work tomorrow. I thought it looked a little bit plain, though, so I wanted to add some pearl beads. I didn’t record the process of gluing the pearls down, but I added a line of them along the inside “seam” of each cardstock piece (some of them fell off though rip) and attached three to the front & back as decorations. 

In hindsight I really should’ve punched holes in the cardstock and fabric and attached the pearls with wire, because the hot glue was really just clinging onto the fur fibers and the pearls were constantly in danger of falling off. Also the back was uh. Very much not aligned. But it’s fine!!!

~ Error Analysis ~

If I had more time I probably would’ve tried to figure out a prettier way to disguise the inside of the two cardstock pieces. They were white and I added that string of pearls, so it wasn’t too bad, but I think it would’ve been nice if I’d done a fabric backing or something like that. 

Also, I realized while I was cutting the fabric that the pile of the fabric was in fact directional—the way I cut it, the fur fibers were kind of going from right to left. Initially I cut it like that because I wanted to align the bottom of the cutout with the non-fraying edge of the fabric, but it wasn’t until I’d already glued the fabric down that I realized the fur looked like it was kind of growing in the wrong direction. I didn’t really care enough to start over though lol.

The other thing is that, even though they were lined up perfectly and the glue circles ensured they wouldn’t collapse, the holes for the hairpins were pretty much invisible from the outside because of the length of the fur. Every time I wanted to insert the hairpin I was stabbing the shit out of the side for like five minutes before I found the hole. Eventually I figured out that I could feel the glue circle from the outside with my fingers so I’d have to locate the holes by touch first and then stab the hairpin through after, so it wasn’t too much of a problem in the end.

On the day of shooting we realized that I maybe should’ve made more hairpin homes though, possibly one in the front/back too. Even with two hairpins, the guan wasn’t very structurally secured on Emily’s (the model for the Song Dynasty set, ig: @/yoursgrim) hair,  because there were only two points of contact. Three or four would’ve been more stable.

Research (More Nerdy Details)

The reason we know about deerskin guan is partially coincidental: it's because they were temporarily outlawed during the northern Song Dynasty, and people recorded legal history and political stuff religiously. There are multiple historical sources pointing to the same edict, so it's pretty clear that these things existed, even though there aren't any physical artifacts (that I know of at least) still intact.

One source is the 麈史/zhu3 shi3/"Stag History" by 王得臣/wang2 de2 chen2/Wang Dechen, a record of various events during the northern Song Dynasty. The Chinese Text Projects has a copy of it that you can view here. There's an English version of the site you can access by clicking English in the top left, but the text itself is still in Chinese so I'm not sure how helpful it really is.

There's a section in the first volume regarding the construction of women's headwear that states:

始用以黃塗白金，或鹿胎之革，或玳瑁，原校：楊有者字。或綴彩羅，為攢雲、五岳之類。既禁用鹿胎、玳瑁，乃為白角者，又點角為假玳瑁之形 (卷上, 35) At first materials were used such as gold-coated platinum, or the hides of fetal deer, or tortoiseshells, original source: Yang Youzhe. Or for decoration colorful silk drapes could be added, to form the shape of clouds, mountains, and similar things. Now the use of fetal deer and tortoiseshell is prohibited, so animal horn is used instead, and can be decorated to look like imitation tortoiseshell.

Another source is the 宋朝事實/song4 chao2 shi4 shi2/"Truthful Events of the Song Dynasty," another historical record of the Northern Song compiled by 李攸/li3 you2/Li You, an author from the Southern Song. Most of it was lost to history, though; the copy we have today was compiled during the Qing Dynasty, and it's incomplete. You can read it here.

The third chapter recounts the outlawing of deerskin guan closely. An official states that:

士庶人家多以鹿胎製造冠子，及有命婦亦戴鹿胎冠子入內者，以致諸處採捕，殺害生牲。宜嚴行禁絕。 (卷三, 4) Many people use fetal deer to make guan headpieces, as well as official's wives wearing deerskin guan into the palace, to the extent that they [fetal deer] are being hunted everywhere, their livelihoods hurt and ended. This should be immediately prohibited.

Later the book quotes the consequent imperial edict outlawing deerskin guan:

「...應臣僚士庶之家不得戴鹿胎冠子，今後諸色人不得採殺鹿胎並製鹿胎冠子。如有違犯，許人陳告，犯人嚴行斷遣，告事人如告獲捕鹿胎人，賞錢二十貫；告戴鹿胎冠子並製造人，賞錢五十貫，以犯人家財充。」 自是鹿胎無用，而採捕者亦絕。（卷三, 4) "...Court officials and their families may not wear deerskin guan, and henceforth no one may kill fetal deer or make deerskin guan. If this edict is violated, the crime should be reported, [and] the criminal severely punished, those who report the crime of hunting fetal deer, shall be awarded twenty strings of money; and those who report the crime of wearing or making deerskin guan, shall be awarded fifty strings of money, to be paid by the perpetrator's family." After [this edict] fetal deer were no longer of use, so their hunters also disappeared.

*Preserved the location of punctuation in the translation to make it easier to match up with the quote, I know it reads kinda weird in English

So clearly they got banned sometime in the Northern Song Dynasty. Fast forward to Southern Song, though, and we see evidence of deerskin guan still in use. 夢粱錄/meng4 liang2 lu4/Dreaming of Liang was a book written by 咸淳/xian2 chun2/Xian Chun in 1274, one of the last years of the Song Dynasty. You can read it here. The thirteenth chapter's last section, 諸色雜貨/zhu1 se4 za2 huo4/Miscellaneous Goods, describes various goods and services often for sale during this time period. Among those were streetside services for fixing and cleaning tools and accessories, including:

...修補鍋銚、箍桶、脩鞋、脩襆頭帽子、補脩冠、接梳兒、染紅綠牙梳、穿結珠子、脩洗鹿胎冠子、脩磨刀翦、磨鏡，時時有盤街者，便可喚之。（卷十三，諸色雜貨） ...fixing pots and pans, barrels, fixing shoes, fixing futou headwear, fixing guan, also taking combs, dyed ivory combs, stringing pearls, fixing and cleaning deerskin guan, fixing or honing knives, polishing mirrors, these were all services available from street-side workers, that could be all be called/requested on demand.

So clearly somewhere in between these guan getting banned and 1274, deerskin guan must have regained popularity, if people were regularly offering cleaning and mending services for them specifically (my guess is that similar to us needing to dry clean fur coats and stuff they probably needed specialized care because of the delicate material). It's reasonable then to assume that there was a resurgence of 鹿胎冠 sometime near the very end of the Song Dynasty.

Now, while I've convinced myself that deerskin guan were probably pretty popular during this time period, there aren’t actually a ton of references for how exactly they would've looked, so I figured I’d just try to make a version of a guan whose shape I already knew, but covered with deer fur fabric.

Going back to 麈史，there's a lengthy description of how different styles of guan evolved over time, one of which is the 山口冠/shan1 kou3 guan1/Mountain-Opening Guan, which is described as:

又以團冠少裁其兩邊，而高其前後，謂之山口。（卷上，35） The round guan could also be shortened on two sides, and heightened at the front and back, to be called "Mountain-Opening."

Assuming the round guan is... somewhat round, we can conclude that the 山口冠 is a tall guan with a very tall front and back, and openings on the left and right, which are shorter. We can connect this to a famous painting, 招涼仕女圖/zhao1 liang2 shi4 nv3 tu2/Painting of Gentlewomen Cooling Off, a painting that was exhibited in 2020 by the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. It was painted by 錢選/qian2 xuan3/Qian Xuan during the Southern Song Dynasty.

宋錢選招涼仕女, Taiwan National Palace Museum Collection, 故畫001248N000000017, Southern Song

We can see in this painting that the woman on the left is wearing a tall guan that matches the description of the 山口冠: the front and back are very tall, while the left and right are shorter. This guan is transparent, so we can also see that it's attached around a bun/topknot, which clues us in as to how exactly it's staying on people's heads.

That's how I decided that I'd use this image as a reference and make a 鹿胎冠 with the shape of a 山口冠 :)

Sources

她，On Women and their Art in Chinese History, Taiwan National Palace Museum (Exhibit Page, 2020) 宋錢選招涼仕女, Taiwan National Palace Museum Collection, 故畫001248N000000017, Southern Song 宋朝事實 by 李攸, Chinese Text Project (compiled from 永樂大典），ctext:420380, Southern Song 麈史 by 王得臣, Chinese Text Project, ctext:332001, Northern Song 夢粱錄 by 吳自牧, Chinese Text Project, ctext:521107, Southern Song 南宋银发冠的艺术特色, 石獅日報 / Shishi Daily, 2022

[redsugarx]

Evolution of the Mamianqun: Yuan

Nav: Presentation // Intro // Southern Song 南宋 // Yuan 蒙元 // Early Ming 明初 // Mid-Early Ming 明中前 // Mid-Late Ming 明中後 // Late Ming 晚明 // Fabrics Pt 1 // Fabrics Pt 2 // Misc Fun Facts // Conclusion

Model: Tiona Zeng (ig: @/tinazzeng), MAISON at Yale

Background

History

Src: Yuan (Mongol) Empire c. 1300, Yuan dynasty, Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Yuan Dynasty was the first time that Han people were ruled over by what we’d consider an ethnic minority. You might remember that the major conflict during the preceding dynasty was between the Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty, or the 女真/nv3 zhen1/Jurchens, which we now call the Manchurians. Really there were a bunch of groups in the area fighting each other—the Jurchens, Mongolians, Khitans, and Han were all involved, with alliances and oppositions switching up between nations pretty quickly. Near the end, the Mongolians (at this point led by Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan) overwhelmed the Southern Song militarily.

*At this point I’d like to note that the Chinese perspective and the Mongolian perspective on the Yuan Dynasty is going to differ. Since I’m studying Han clothing culture, I’m primarily going to be looking at this from the Chinese side of things, but I want to acknowledge that there is a whole other side of this that I’m probably not going to be reporting on much, and I would encourage anyone who wants to get a better idea of what was going on to go look for Mongolian-perspective sources as well, because it does get kinda icky politically.

This was a big turning point for Han people, but to his credit, Kublai Khan fucked up a lot less for them than he could have. Coming into power, while there were obviously some pretty harsh actions made to prevent Han uprising/maintain power, a surprising amount of the existing Han political structure was preserved. He didn't mandate that Han people wear Mongolian clothing, didn't force them to adopt their religion.

I think that this willingness to keep Han and Mongolian peoples' culture separate was both the Yuan Dynasty's intrigue and also, later on, its downfall. The Mongolians did not have the same centuries of experience in administering/governing a massive country like China—they themselves had only been unified for maybe fifty years, under Genghis Khan. And governing China is hard—it's huge, and it's got a ton of people, and a very complicated economy.

It would have been much harder to force all of that to assimilate into Mongolian culture, especially when they were so outnumbered. I also remember reading that Kublai Khan's philosophy was much less ruthless than Genghis Khan's, who probably could've gone down that route; I don't think that he would've been willing to try that.

Src: Portraits of Shizu (Kublai Khan) & Chabi by Yuan Nepalese artist Araniko, cropped & cut for exhibit Age of the Great Khan, Taipei National Palace Museum

The other choice, which is maybe a bit closer to what they did, would be to adopt Chinese culture: the centralized structure, doing things in the same language, etc. But that came at a price: other powerful Mongolians understandably disagreed, losing favor with them. He also wasn't willing to fully assimilate, which meant the Han people would still feel disconnected from their 'foreign' rulers.

Straddling this line between culture was risky business. By maintaining separate cultures and separate identities, they made sure that neither culture was completely lost or assimilated while still allowing for the artistic and philosophical development that came with encountering unfamiliar influences closely; however, this unwillingness to pick a side also meant that both sides had something to be upset about. Lots of historians name this as the primary reason why the Yuan Dynasty, in the end, lasted less than a hundred years.

On the cultural side, a lot of introspective art surrounding culture and tradition arose out of this period, along with vernacular fiction and theater. Being under foreign rule called many artists to examine and question their own ideas of identity and ownership—might I say similar to how some of us third culture kids feel—and art has always been very much a political medium.

Nevertheless, this post is not about the Yuan Dynasty influence on Han clothing, because I'll be covering that in a different post for this collection when I explain the design for one of the 胡服騎射 Styles from the Steppes robes. Just know that there was a significant amount of cross-cultural evolution.

The Skirt: Research & Evidence

Artifacts

The sources for Yuan Dynasty hanfu are limited, partly because most hanfu enthusiasts don’t really consider the Yuan Dynasty a part of hanfu history. I will leave the choice of distinction up to the reader’s personal preference. Whether or not Yuan Dynasty clothing should count as hanfu, it still played a part in the history of the mamianqun specifically, bridging the hundred years between the fall of Song and the rise of Ming—in fact we really see the mamianqun take shape at this time. I think it would be remiss not to include it.

Also, we're trying to encompass almost a century's worth of fashion across a massive country in one outfit, so obviously we're not going to be able to include everything; garment styles have been chosen based on available evidence to best represent the Yuan Dynasty but they are definitely not indicative of what must have been worn then.

Again, while the sources are limited, there are a few easily established facts. One, the Mongolian and Han women were allowed to maintain different clothing systems during the Yuan Dynasty. I briefed both—the prior because of a custom order I took from someone in the SCA—but for this project we’re focusing on the latter. They still impacted one another, and by quite a lot, but neither was ever forced to conform to the other like in the Qing Dynasty.

I was able to find three relevant Yuan Dynasty burial sites with skirt artifacts, though all of the sources are very bits-and-pieces, and most of the photos are like... unbelievably shitty, so bear with me here. These include the following:

無錫錢裕墓 / wu2 xi1 qian2 yu4 mu4 / Tomb of Qianyu, Wuxi

Src: Wuxi Museum exhibition page title banner graphic

The skirts from this first one don’t resemble the mamianqun much, but you can sort of see the beginning of the form starting to take place. The official report for this and some of the photos of the artifacts that are floating around seem to be at odds with each other sometimes, so I'd take this with a grain of salt.

Anyway, this burial site is in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province. There are a ton of burials near here, which makes sense considering its location (smack dab in the middle of the coastline). It was discovered in 1960; the report was written in 1964 (it takes a while to get everything organized). It belonged to a man named 錢裕/Qianyu who lived from 1247-1320CE, and was buried in 1321CE (I'm hoping this is a case of 'died at the end of the year and buried at the beginning of the next year' and not 'we forgot his body in the fridge for like ten months'). As a descendant of a king from the Five Dynasties period, he would've been a part of an aristocratic family.

In 1964, a short artifact report on the 154 items unearthed from this site states that there were 6 skirts uncovered, 3 lined and 3 unlined; a later restoration report + the Wuxi Museum database only has 5 total, so I assume at some point one of the unlined skirts got too damaged to rescue or something. I'm also like 90% sure someone fucked up entering the names into the database, because they gave two of the artifacts the exact same name, and all the names in the restoration report match up except for one.

I've pirated borrowed some screenshots of the report above. The passage concerning this skirt is inexplicably written in a weird combination of simplified and traditional Chinese; I am transcribing it in traditional because I like traditional.

裙共6件，古黄色。3件夹，2件面提花紋綢，1件素綢，裹皆素綢，独幅無折襉，前面鑲有繡大花圖案紗兩條，腰部合縫處有素帶一副，長82、腰圍160釐米（圖二六）。3件單：素綢，前面中間開交縫，2件腰部兩側縫折襇，腰合縫處有素帶殘存。長88–61腰圍、1.40釐米。 In total there are 6 skirts, in an antique yellow color. 3 skirts were quilted [lined], [and of these,] 2 skirts’ outer layer was made of damask jacquard silk, and 1 skirt’s was made of plain-weave silk, with a single roll's width of fabric with no pleats, and in the front there are two inlaid strips of embroidery of large flowers, at the waistband seam there are a pair of ribbons for tying, length 82,, waist 160cm (figure 26). 3 skirts were unlined: They were made of plain-weave silk, seamed together in the middle, and 2 of the waistbands have pleats on either side, and the waist seam shows signs of ribbons having been sewn there [that have since been destroyed]. Lengths 88—61,, waist [sic] 1.40cm.

If you're getting dizzy looking at this translation, it's not just you, the report is worded incredibly unclearly, and it's made worse by the fact that there's no way to distinguish between the two kinds of Chinese commas in the English translation (I preserved the punctuation placement so that those of you who kind-of know Chinese can try to match up the phrases), the second type of which 、 I represented with ",," double comma. It's really hard to tell which one of these skirts they're referring to when they're giving you these details. Also clearly someone fucked up with the units on the waist; unless this skirt was made for an alarmingly tall wasp, they probably meant 140cm or 1.40m.

The very grainy picture on the right from the report is only listed as "素綢夾裙," aka plain-weave silk lined skirt, and you can see that it definitely has some sort of embroidered trim going on, so I'm reasonably sure it's either this one (F76 元棕褐色缠枝牡丹纹缎镶妆花罗边饰女夹裙) or this one (F75 元棕色素罗镶妆花罗缘夹裙), shown below:

L: F76 元棕褐色缠枝牡丹纹缎镶妆花罗边饰女夹裙 Brown Winding Branch Peony Patterned Brocaded Trim Lined Skirt // R: F75 元棕色素罗镶妆花罗缘夹裙 Brown Plain Luo Silk Brocaded Trim Lined Skirt // both from Wuxi Museum, im not writing the pinyin out for this it's way too long, just go google it or something

The caption for the one on the F76 says "袖长82，腰围101，裙边长160" aka "sleeve length 82, waist 101, skirt side length 160." Obviously something was entered into the system wrong because this skirt clearly does not have sleeves. I think they meant the skirt length was 82cm and the waist is 160cm across, which would then match up with the text in the report.

However, two things don't match up: First, the skirt in the figure appears to have the embroidered trim going down the middle, but not at the hem, and both of these skirts have hem trim. Second, the report says that the skirt shown in figure 26 doesn't have pleats, but lo and behold this photo from... probably (possibly?) legal sources that I will not be disclosing because I don't wanna get sued, and you shall see... pleats.

So yeah, idk what's going on here. Regardless, the important thing is that you can sort of see some evidence pleats in the mamianqun structure, even though they're not in the same place yet: you'll notice that the pleats on either side are folded in opposite directions, mirroring each other, which is characteristic of the mamianqun pleats, whereas earlier and simpler knife pleats were unidirectional.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that this F76 artifact looks like one-half of a mamianqun: If you were to take two of them, overlap them, and join the waistbands, I think you'd get a (very wide) traditional mamianqun. Who knows, since it's clear that the waistband has been reconstructed, maybe it was half of an early mamianqun.

華容元墓 / hua2 rong2 yuan2 mu4 / Huarong Yuan Tomb

The Yuan Dynasty tomb site in Huarong, Hunan is kinda weird because I can't find a technical report anywhere, but there are a lot of pictures available of the stuff there because China Silk Museum has an online virtual gallery of it from when it was exhibited in conjunction with Hunan Museum. It's a little buggy and takes a while to load, but if you like looking at clothing artifacts I'd highly recommend clicking around for a few minutes!

Anyway, it belonged to an unnamed woman who died in ~1287CE aged 32 years old. To qualify this a little, she would've spent more of her life in Southern Song than Yuan, even though she was buried in the Yuan Dynasty and thus it's a Yuan Dynasty archaeological site. Still, I do think it's worth looking at as a transitional period, especially when we're looking at the evolution of the mamianqun as a whole.

Src: Hunan Museum database 元烟色缠枝荷花罗褶裥裙 artifact page, they've been doing weird shit to their website so a better way to access it is to go to this artifact's Baidu page, scroll to the problem where it says 参考资料 (references), and then click the link there that says 烟色缠枝荷花罗褶裥裙- 湖南省博物馆, which will open a more stable copy of the page through Baidu.

There are two well-preserved skirts that I could find data on for this site. One is the picture above, taken from the database of the Hunan Museum, 烟色缠枝荷花罗褶裥裙 / yan1 se4 chan2 zhi1 he2 hua1 luo2 zhe23 jian3 qun2 / Tobacco-Colored Winding Lotus Branch Luo Silk Pleated Skirt. It's hard to see exactly what the construction is like since the pleats have slightly lost their shape, but the three flat skirt doors + pleats on two sides are definitely there.

Src: 雅韵湘传 virtual exhibition page (click the link at the top of the page to access the virtual gallery, I quite literally screenshotted stuff off it), joint exhibit by Hunan Museum and China Silk Museum

This one above looks even more similar—it's the 串枝牡丹菊花紋綾夾裙 / chuan4 zhi1 mu3 dan1 jv2 hua1 wen2 ling2 jia2 qun2 / Threaded Peony & Chrysanthemum Branch Pattern Lined Silk Skirt. All the elements are there: Three flat skirt faces/doors, symmetrical pleating on either side, two-panel construction. In total there are 2 pairs of pleats on each side not including the skirt doors, which is much fewer than most Ming Dynasty mamianqun do (minimum 4 usually).

苏州吴张士诚母曹氏墓 / su1 zhou1 wu2 zhang1 shi4 cheng2 mu3 cao2 shi4 mu4 / Tomb of Lady Cao, Mother of Zhang Shicheng of Wu, in Suzhou

This site from Suzhou belonged to the mother of 张士诚 / zhang1 shi4 cheng2 / Zhang Shicheng, the king of the rebel states of Zhou and Wu during the latter half of the Yuan Dynasty. He was directly involved in the Red Turban Rebellion that eventually toppled Yuan completely. We don't know her name, just that she was his mother and her maiden clan's name was 曹/cao2. She died in 1365, one of the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, and would've witnessed most of the dynasty. We found her in 1966, and her burial site has been affectionately termed 娘娘墓/niang2 niang0 mu4/Mother's tomb (娘娘 is like, a 'motherly' address for powerful women like queens and empresses, it doesn't exactly mean mother but it sort of implies a respectful matronly relation).

Unfortunately we have scarcely any pictures of the skirt garments from this tomb, but there is a publicly available short report from Suzhou Museum. There is one singular extremely grainy photo of one of the skirts, simply titled 緞裙/duan4 qun2/satin skirt, and a paragraph describing the six skirts buried with her.

There were 6 total skirts, 2 of which were significantly damaged. The report states that

全用三幅料制做， 前幅左右縫折間， 平校素綢里子。 All skirts were made with three widths [pieces] of fabric, the frontal pieces with pleats sewn on the left and right, and lined with plain-woven silk.

The report also says that all the skirts have a width of 340cm, which seems suspicious to me; I suspect they may have been referring to the 擺/bai3/hem length of the skirt rather than the waist width. The lengths are all between 82 and 93cm, which is in line with the other skirts found from this time. The pictured skirt is a satin silk skirt woven with jacquard patterns of the Eight Heavenly Objects and clouds and dragons.

Figurines

Apart from physical artifacts, we can see the emergence of side pleats in sculpture. There are a ton of Yuan Dynasty figurines made from grey ceramic. You can tell the Han and Mongolian figurines apart both by their clothing and by their hairstyles. 

Src: 彩繪雙髻女陶俑, from 中國國家博物館 National Museum of China, unearthed 1956 from 段繼榮墓 Duan Jirong tomb in Shaanxi Province, buried 1266, third year of the Yuan Dynasty in that region (still Song Dynasty in some other places)

The Han ones are almost always wearing skirts and short tops, and if you take a look at their sides, you can see that there are clearly defined pleats running from the waist to the hem on both sides. It’s hard to see how many exactly, and we can’t really see if the skirt is constructed with two panels or not, but given artifacts from adjacent time periods (and the few we have that are confirmed to be from the Yuan Dynasty), it seems like these were the most rudimentary forms of mamianqun, with straight outlines and only a few pleats.

Src: 女侍俑, 元代黑陶, Xi'an Jiaotong University Heritage & Exhibition Online

So it seems like the first introduction of side pleats happened during the Yuan Dynasty. I can’t say for sure how much exactly Mongolian garments contributed to that, and I haven’t found any sources directly suggesting that, but I would be personally surprised if they didn’t—despite the (tbf debated) social classism Han people were subject to, they were still living side by side in a mixed environment with both Han and Mongolian influences.

Mongolian clothing seemed to also have incorporated pleats and side-pleats before this—not necessarily in skirts, but often on the lower part of their segmented robes, terligs/deels, which the Han people would later adapt into the 貼裡/tie1 li3 and 曵撒/ye3 sa4 robes (but that’s for later). I think it’s very likely that seeing this silhouette around might have influenced some design decisions at the time, or at least got some people thinking.

Design

From what I know I believe our design for the Yuan Dynasty would've been closer to that of a mid- to high- status woman closer to the northern side of China at the time, which had slightly different trends than the south.

Skirt

The design for the Yuan version of 龍馬附圖 Metamorphosis is an early form 馬面裙 with a black body and red trim.

The black body material is a custom-woven jacquard polyester. Once again I will elaborate more on the design of the fabric in future posts (probably the next one, Early Ming).

The red trim is jacquard rayon, specifically short-fiber viscose. In comparison with the previous skirt, the trim has migrated from the sides of the skirt panels to just on the hem. This is to represent how many of the artifacts also have trim that's separately sewn onto the skirt.

The hem length of this skirt is 4.5m, on the shorter/more standard length for mamianqun. This is because there are not that many pleats, which means we need less fabric to make them work, and also because it's much lighter that way. The pleats are straight knife pleats, with four pairs of pleats on each side.

Four pairs of pleats is a little more than the skirt artifacts introduced above, but having fewer than four can make it hard to see the structure of the skirt coming into play, and it can also limit the movement at the hips a little more. This is less of a problem if you're using very light and soft silks, which is likely what was depicted in the figurines given the way the fabric wrinkle in the front, but when you have a stiffer fabric (and when it's not, you know, really expensive silk) it gets a little harder to move around. (I do think maybe 3 pairs would do it though, I might revise the design in the future.)

Other Outfit Pieces

Cami underlayer: 抹胸 / mo3 xiong1 / "Wrap Top"

Src: 雅韵湘传 virtual exhibition page , joint exhibit by Hunan Museum and China Silk Museum

The innermost layer for the Yuan Dynasty set is a very simple 抹胸/mo3 xiong1. It's essentially just a rectangle you wrap around your torso and tie. These have remained virtually unchanged in structure between the Song and Yuan Dynasties, except that the ribbon ties for the Yuan Dynasty artifact (mostly the Huarong one) are particularly thick. Ours is made of red jacquard viscose and lined with a layer of cotton. I believe there's also one from 黄澄存夫妇合葬墓 but I don't have a good picture of it.

Pants: 開襠褲 / kai1 dang1 ku4 / "Open-Crotch Trousers"

Src: 雅韵湘传 virtual exhibition page , joint exhibit by Hunan Museum and China Silk Museum

Practically identical to the Song Dynasty version, these pants are also called 開襠褲, or open-crotch pants. There's another one from the Huarong tomb site. It's made of red jacquard viscose.

Shirt: 飛機袖對襟短衫 / fei1 ji1 xiu4 duan3 shan1 / "Airplane-Sleeved Parallel Collar Short Top"

L: 印金罗长袖衫, China Silk Museum // R: 罗质夹袄, Gansu Provincial Museum

This sleeve shape persisted into the Yuan Dynasty for Han women, with multiple examples of similar garments. The one above is from China Silk Museum's collections. Notice that the connection point of the sleeve to the body has migrated inwards towards the shoulder, more similar to western garments (not replicated by our design, but interesting to look at nonetheless). The artifact on the right from Gansu Provincial Museum also has a mismatched collar length, meaning that it was likely meant to be worn crossed over, so that the empty space on the shorter side would be covered. Also notice that in this case because it's the right side of the collar that's shorter, this would mean it was meant to be worn right-over-left (左衽 / zuo3 ren4）rather than left-over-right （右衽 / you4 ren4）which is/was traditional for Han people.

Coat: 貉袖 / he2 xiu4 / Half-Sleeve Coat

TL: 蓝地菱格卍字龙纹双色锦对襟棉袄, 北京大运河博物馆 // TR: 妆花凤戏牡丹纹绫夹衫, Gansu Provincial Museum // BR: 元棕色素缎镶深褐色罗直襟夹袍, Wuxi Museum

The 貉袖 / he2 xiu4 / Tanuki-sleeve is a short half-sleeved garment we know about from the text 說郛 / shuo1 fu2, a late Yuan–early Ming text by 陶宗儀 / tao2 zong1 yi2. In the chapter 因話錄宋曾叫異蠶鵲 / yin1 hua4 lu4 song4 ceng2 jiao4 yi4 can2 que4, there is a description of a late Song Dynasty short lined jacket called the 貉袖 with sleeves only going up to the elbows. Similar garments matching this description have been unearthed from several Yuan Dynasty tombs. The trim placement imitates a different longer Yuan Dynasty robe also shown above from the same Qianyu tomb as one of the skirt references. Ours is made of viscose and lined with a silk-cotton-poly mix, shown bottom left above. I'm probably gonna do a separate post on this one at some point; if I do I'll link it here. Design note—initially I had a sleeve cuff trim on this thing in addition to the collar and hemline, but after examining a lot of the artifacts it looks like none of them have sleeve trim so I took it off.

Other Styling

I don't have a lot to say on this part this time that hasn't pretty much been covered by the previous section, but I'll go over some things quickly.

Makeup was pretty similar to the Song Dynasty stuff, with similar pearl face ornamentations and a more classic curved/arched brow. The pearls are a little sparser this time, with a pair of them in the 面靥 / mian4 ye4 / dimple locations, and two on the forehead, imitating the shape of the 葫芦/ hu2 lu2 /gourd. Both the gourd shape and the inclusion of pearls were popular motifs for both Mongolian and Han fashion well through the Yuan, and Ming Dynasties.

Hair was relatively simple, mimicking the high buns sported by the black ceramic figurines of Yuan Dynasty women referred to previously. Single and double buns have both appeared in these figurines; one commonality between hairstyles of Han women at this time seems to be a visible middle part, so we made sure to include that.

Accessories

Src: 新编对相四言, essentially an illustrated dictionary made for children from the Yuan Dynasty, specifically the entry for 鐶 / huan2, the character for one type of earring. Wikimedia Commons.

Earrings: The hulu gourd shape seemed to take off in popularity around this time, and it didn't fade out for a while—it was sort of a quintessential Imperial Chinese motif. Lots of gourd-shaped earrings already exist; I thought that was a little bit boring and decided to fuck around with it a bit. The concept of the gourd shape is really very simple, it's just a bigger bead on the bottom and a smaller bead on the top.

I had some beads lying around that my mom bought from Taipei like... six years ago; it's hard to see the details but the bigger bead is clear with gold Chinese characters inscribed on the surface. The smaller one is a simple round cloudy white bead. I added a spacer in between them to ease the transition of the 'waist' of the gourd, and I wrapped the loop at the top to make the whole shape more cohesive.

The chain detail in the back is just a thin necklace chain I cut with pliers, plus a jump ring with a tiny pearl bead threaded onto it. You may notice, if you look closely, that the jump ring is actually silver, because I did not have any gold jump rings on hand oopsies.

胸帶 / xiong1 dai4 / chest ribbon:

Src: 陶女俑, 新00122312, 北京故宫博物院 Beijing Palace Museum

Many Yuan Dynasty figurines of women show a ribbon tied around the bust as a decoration. My guess is that this can also help keep open-front tops together. Our recreation of this was not... totally accurate, because the red ribbon we had was quite long compared to the figurines, which seemed to end right after the knot with short tails, but hey at least we tried. Also we filmed this on 12/21 which was very close to Christmas and it was very Chrismast-y.

Ending disclaimer—I will be elaborating more on the Mongolian-Han fashion culture during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties in a different post in the future, but it might be like May-ish, after the photoshoot content for the Steppes line comes out.

Works Cited [MMQ]

Works Cited [MMQ]

[redsugarx]

Evolution of the Mamianqun: Song

Nav: Presentation // Intro // Southern Song 南宋 // Yuan 蒙元 // Early Ming 明初 // Mid-Early Ming 明中前 // Mid-Late Ming 明中後 // Late Ming 晚明 // Fabrics Pt 1 // Fabrics Pt 2 // Misc Fun Facts // Conclusion

Model: Emily Chang (ig: @/emi1y_chang), MAISON at Yale

First design background post for the Metamorphosis 龍馬附圖/long2 ma3 fu4 tu2 set: the Southern Song Dynnasty! The featured skirt for this set is called the 兩片裙/liang3 pian4 qun2/"Two-Panel Skirt."

Background

History

While the Tang Dynasty is often called the Golden Age of China, the Song Dynasty's economy actually did even better. Art, technology, and philosophy made leaps and bounds during this time period. Usually, the Song Dynasty is split into Northern and Southern Song. Southern Song was the latter half, lasting from 1127–1279, and it's called that because it only occupied territory south of the Huai River, where it was pushed by its ongoing conflict with the Jurchens/Manchurians/Jin.

Src: Wikimedia Commons, English: China during the Southern Song dynasty

During this period, the Song did not have control over a lot of the territories that we now know as China. However, it still maintained access to a very large stretch of coast along the bottom half of the country, and it put the ports there to good use. Naval power and maritime trade were on the rise, exchange of foreign cultures and influences was accessible, and things like art, literature, and philosophy went through a lot of development.

Cultural & Aesthetic Trends

The Song Dynasty brand of aestheticism is very famous. In general, it’s elegant, understated, and refined, reflecting the rise of naturalism and the quality of discernment. Appreciation of the natural world was a big thing, regardless of whether it was in poetry, painting, philosophy, or science.

In fashion, especially women’s fashion, they really leaned into the willowy, slender, almost ‘sickly’ silhouette (Dong Yun, 2021). As a result, many Song Dynasty styles featured long vertical lines and slimmer shapes that gave you the illusion of longer, thinner proportions. There are several examples of this: the long beizi garments often hit between knee and ankle length, and they often feature a contrasting collar, giving you a continuous vertical line element between the neck and the hemline. Tall guan headpieces increased your height, making you look thinner as a result.

歌樂圖，上海博物館 Shanghai Museum, Southern Song (artist unknown)

Leading into how the skirt might've come about, since the ideal body shape was very thin, the shape of the skirts also had to be narrower and closer to the body—tighter. The problem with tightening the skirt, though, is that you lose mobility in your hips and legs. Modern western fashion has gone through similar trends—see hobble skirts of the 1910s, which had hemlines so tight that you could barely move your legs, hence the name, or their more practical descendants, the pencil skirt. 

There are many ways to solve this problem, but the one that we’re focusing on is the two-panel construction. In its tightest, most basic form, a wrap skirt is just a piece of fabric that wraps around the waist. However, walking or riding requires you to be able to separate your legs from each other—not so much at the waist, but much further apart at the ankles. So one possibility is to use two pieces of fabric that are allowed to move independently at the hem, but connected to the same waistband.

The two panels are allowed to separate at the bottom, but secured together at the top. The overlap ensures that there’s enough coverage to prevent any wardrobe malfunctions. When standing still, you’ve achieved the illusion of a perfectly tight silhouette, all without the use of zippers, elastics, or buttons—maintaining the traditional wrap-tie closure of hanfu skirts.

(I'd like to pause to say that my reasoning for thin beauty standard -> tight skirt -> two-panel solution is just based off what I think makes sense, I do not have a source for that, it's just what I think probably happened. I can't see into the brains of thirteenth century tailors unfortunately (or anyone's, for that matter).)

We know this was a relatively common women’s skirt in the Song Dynasty, as we’ve excavated multiple of them. We also know that this two-panel skirt construction largely overtook single-panel wrap skirts around this time and continuing into Ming; while there are fewer fully intact artifacts after the fall of Song, there are several skirt relics which have clearly come apart from the skirt head due to the seams between them disintegrating. After a certain time period, almost all of them occur in pairs of rectangular or trapezoidal skirt panels. It’s reasonable to conclude that this became somewhat of a basic essential skirt shape at the time.

The Skirt: Research & Evidence

Artifacts

Ironically, there are more physical artifacts and fewer paintings depicting the xuanqun, which is the opposite of most hanfu styles. This is partially because the Song Dynasty is in the latter half of what we consider to be ancient Chinese history, so it’s more recent, and also because the 仕女圖/shi4 nv3 tu2, a type of painting specifically depicting beautiful gentlewomen, started to decline in popularity during this era.

南宋穿枝飞鸟纹围裹式两片裙（江西德安周氏墓），from 中国古代服饰结构与工艺复原研习班（二）：南宋褙子、围裹式两片裙的裁剪与制作, China Silk Museum (2023)

The most well-preserved xuanqun artifacts come from the Huangshengmu site in Fuzhou, Fujian, 黃昇墓/huang2 sheng1 mu4 (discovered 1975, dated 1229) and Zhoushimu site in De’an, Jiangxi, 周氏墓/zhou1 shi4 mu4 (discovered 1988, dated 1274). The De'an one is shown above; pictures of the ones from Huangshengmu will come later (there are several of them). Idk much about Zhoushi other than that her clan name is Zhou (that's what Zhou shi means), but we know that Huangsheng (that's her name) had just been married to her fairly high-ranking husband one year before she died, at just 17 years old. Her clothing, then, is probably in line with what a (very) young, well-to-do married woman would've worn.

Both are tombs belonging to women who would have witnessed the last few years before the fall of Southern Song to Mongolian forces, the latter passing away less than five years before the official end of the Song Dynasty. From this we can conclude that this skirt might not have taken shape until the very end of the dynasty, which could be another reason why we rarely see it directly depicted in paintings. 

I was only able to get my hands on the original report of the Huangshengmu tomb (version 1, borrowed from NTU library in Taipei), so most of my design references were based on that. Here's what I was able to get.

福州南宋黃昇墓（文物出版社）1982, 福建省博物館, official archaeology report by Fujian Provincial Museum, version 1, pg 36-38 of photos section

A total of 21 skirts were included in the tomb. Two of these were pleated skirts (most likely 百迭裙/bai3 die2 qun2 hundred-layer skirts), one is a shorter wrap skirt, one is lined, and the remaining 17 are unlined skirts following the same two-panel cut of the 兩片裙/liang3 pian4 qun2.

Focusing on the 17 unlined skirts: the report states that each skirt is made of 4 pieces of fabric, aka 2 pairs. Each pair was sewn together to make 2 bigger panels, which are the 2 panels described by the name 兩片裙. Then the two panels are arranged on the left and right so that the central two pieces overlap.

The most reasonable explanation for needing two pieces for each panel is that the width of the looms at the time weren’t wide enough to make the whole panel out of one piece of fabric. This is common, and a reason why many of the fundamental seams in hanfu exist.

The report does note that the middle pieces are wider than the two side pieces, and specifies that the pieces are only connected at the waistband and not anywhere else.

It’s hard to tell the exact shapes of each piece, as some of the fabric stretched out/disintegrated, but it appears that each panel is made of either one trapezoid and one rectangle, or two trapezoids. The very slight A-line shape can help account for the shape of the hips.

福州南宋黃昇墓（文物出版社）1982, 福建省博物館, official archaeology report by Fujian Provincial Museum, version 1, pg 15, blue text annotation by me

There’s also some speculation on whether or not darts were employed at the waistline—my instinct is to say no, because they didn't include it in the line art, but it’s hard to definitively rule out the possibility, because it’s possible that the darts are very small or hidden under the overlapping part, or that they used to be there but disintegrated.

The line art (above the previous paragraph) might also have excluded some details—while line drawings are supposed to be the most accurate structural depictions of these artifacts, this one is very very simple and also has an extra line segment that shouldn't be there, so I don't think it's impossible that they left one or two things out, even if unlikely.

Also, we know that darts could be employed at the waist (like it was a technique that existed at the time) because some of the pants artifacts from the same tomb have them (pg 14 line drawing, there's some more info on it later in this post).

14 out of 17 skirts have trim. The trim goes around the hem of the skirt as well as the vertical sides of each panel, creating a vertical line on the outside panel separating it from the inside one. I liked that this highlighted the structure of the skirt. Later on in the series we'll see the trim migrate to the bottom of the skirt once vertical knife pleats come into play.

Another thing is that all 17 of the skirts' total lengths are between 76cm and 87cm (福州南宋黃昇墓 Table 13: 裙各部位尺寸登記表, table of measurements of skirts). Whatever you're wearing under the skirt would've been visible from underneath, even if you're very short—this is most likely a shorter overskirt then, clearly not a floor-length one.

Literature

There is a fairly well-known account dated to Northern Song that we suspect refer to this style of skirt. The more likely of the two is 嘉祐杂志 by 江休複, which states that:

婦人不服寬褲與襜，制旋裙，必前後開胯，以便乘驢（卷上，97） Women did not wear "ku" or "chan", but made "xuanqun," which opened at the front and back hips, to make riding donkeys easier.

This is where the name 旋裙/xuan2 qun2 "revolved skirt" comes from, which most enthusiasts take as synonymous to 兩片裙 these days.

Take my translation with a grain of salt (maybe a pinch?); I'm not very good at archaic Chinese and I did grow up in America still. The ku here refers to a certain kind of pants (there used to be multiple different characters referring to different types of pants, but only one of them is still used today and it refers to all pants now), I'm not totally sure what chan is but it's definitely some other kind of garment (has a clothing 衣 radical).

開胯 literally means "open hips," but like referring the whole pelvic region, not just the outside hips. If you've been in the hanfu scene for a while you might have heard the most common Tang Dynasty round-collared robes being referred to as 缺胯袍/que1 kua4 pao2, which directly translates to "missing-hips robe" on account of the high side slits allowing for higher mobility, and uses the same character 胯.

The two-panel skirt could reasonably fit into this description, as there is a 'vent' in the front and the back, which allows the hips/legs to move freely in movements such as riding. However, it does not mention an overlapping of fabric, and there could be many different skirts that match this description—we might just not have been lucky enough to dig others up yet.

Also this source was written in Northern Song instead of Southern Song, so if it is indeed referring to the same kind of skirt then it's possible that the two-panel skirt took shape earlier than we thought (or I thought, anyway).

Design

Skirt

The design for the Southern Song version of 龍馬附圖 Metamorphosis is a 兩片裙 with a black body and red trim.

The black body material is a custom-woven jacquard polyester. I will elaborate more on the design of the fabric in future posts, because 1) I keep maxing out the image limit for each post and 2) this fabric gets reused in the next two sets as well.

The red trim is jacquard rayon, specifically short-fiber viscose.

I mentioned that several of the Huangshengmu skirts had trims. For all of those skirts the width of the trim was between 1-3cm (福州南宋黃昇墓 Table 13: 裙各部位尺寸登記表, table of measurements of skirts). The skirt in my design has a wider trim than that, because I wanted it to be more visible from a distance, and because I felt that the thicker trim was more visually harmonious with the rest of the set.

In addition, the border on these skirts wrap all the way around each panel, instead of leaving one side with no trim. This is so that you don't have to worry about which side to leave out/which side to leave in when you wrap it around your waist, which I think might be confusing for some people, especially if you haven't been in the hanfu scene for a long time and aren't very used to wearing and tying thee kinds of wrap skirts.

Other Outfit Pieces

Cami underlayer: 黃升墓抹胸 / huang2 sheng1 mu4 mo3 xiong1 / "Apron Top from Huangsheng Tombsite"

L: 福州南宋黃昇墓（文物出版社）1982, 福建省博物館, official archaeology report by Fujian Provincial Museum, version 1, pics pg 40 pic 54 // R: Emily's lat spread eyyyyy

The innermost layer for the Song Dynasty set is an open-back apron top usually known as the Huangshengmu 抹胸/mo3 xiong1. It’s based on a simple garment also excavated from Huangshengmu, and has been very popular among Hanfu enthusiasts for a long time, especially in the summertime. It's got two little triangles attached to the top where it extends into the shoulders (some people call them 'cat ears') and an open back usually strung up in a crisscross pattern. This one is made with two layers of a light teal jacquard rayon (as in it's lined with the same fabric as the outside is made of). Here's a picture of Emily's immaculate lat spread for your viewing pleasure (I have permission dw).

Pants: 開襠褲 / kai1 dang1 ku4 / "Open-Crotch Trousers"

L: 福州南宋黃昇墓（文物出版社）1982, 福建省博物館, official archaeology report by Fujian Provincial Museum, version 1, pg 6 pic 7 // R: '', pg 14

The pants are called 開襠褲, or open-crotch pants. They're called that because the crotch isn't technically attached, but there's enough overlap on the backside when you put it on that it's unlikely that anything would show, kind of like a skirt. These are usually worn on the inside of a skirt or another layer of closed-crotch pants. This specific pattern was based off the pants excavated from 黃昇墓 as well. It's made of a dark teal rayon-polyester mix with longer fiber strands, which is slightly less susceptible to wrinkling.

Shirt: 飛機袖對襟短衫 / fei1 ji1 xiu4 duan3 shan1 / "Airplane-Sleeved Parallel Collar Short Top"

The inner long-sleeved top is colloquially known as a 飛機袖, which refers to the shape of the sleeve, which narrows from the shoulder to the wrist, an extremely popular sleeve shape at the time—a ton of them have been excavated from Northern and Southern Song Dynasty tombs alike. This one pictured above is like the most common pic of a feijixiu in existence, it's one from 鐵拐墓/tie3 guai3 mu4 in Anhui, which is a Northern Song tomb, it's been passed around so many times idk where the original source is but it's legit. The body is just a 對襟短衫, which is a very basic structure. 飛機袖 can be worn open, with the collars parallel to each other, or crossed over. We styled it open for this shoot so that the inside would be visible.

Coat: 褙子 / 褙子 / "Beizi Coat"

福州南宋黃昇墓（文物出版社）1982, 福建省博物館, official archaeology report by Fujian Provincial Museum, version 1. L: pg 3 pic 3 // R: pg 2 pic 2

Song Dynasty 褙子 are parallel-collar outer garments, sort of like formal suit jackets or blazers. During Southern Song they got gradually longer and narrower, reflecting the beauty standards of the time, and contrasting borders along the sleeve cuffs or collars increased the lengthening effect. Huangshengmu also had a bajillion of these, one such pic above.

Other Styling

Makeup

Very traditional Hanfu makeup is quite different from modern makeup—the features it seeks to enhance, the colors it uses, and the purpose of using it at all can differ greatly from the looks we usually try to create today.

For this project, the focus was mostly on three areas: lip, eyebrow, and blush. The colors used are fairly simple and constant—very dark brows, bright red lip color, warm peachy blush—and the differences mostly come from their shape and placement.

Photo by Lizi Studio 栗子

Lip: There were a variety of Song Dynasty lip shapes around—they were a little less center-heavy than the Tang Dynasty ones, but still retained the plumper shape, usually with some color leading towards the outer corners. The cupid’s bow was pronounced and highlighted. The shape that we ended up with was a little on the thicker side for most Song Dynasty looks, but it was harder to go very thin because Emily’s upper lip is significantly thinner than her lower lip, so we had to adjust a bit.

Eyebrow: Ngl the names for eyebrow shapes—especially for any dynasty other than Tang—aren’t really standardized, so there usually ends up being many names for one shape/many shapes attributed to one name. The shape I wanted to go with was initially introduced to me as 鴛鴦眉/yuan1 yang1 mei2 "Mandarin Duck Brows," but it’s got lots of other names too. It’s a shape that’s thicker at the front of the brow, which is slightly upturned, and thinner at the ends, which are downturned, resulting in a gentle, S-shaped curve. We had to glue + conceal the models’ natural brows to achieve this (your other option was to shave them but that would be a bit extreme).

明 唐寅《孟蜀宫妓图》, Closeup of Tang Yin's 孟蜀宫妓图, technically painted during the Ming Dynasty but Tang Yin is famous for basically only painting Tang/Song styled ladies and it's really easy to tell that these are Song ladies based on what they're wearing

Blush & Face: During the Song and Ming dynasties, there was a popular form of makeup called the 三白妝/san1 bai2 zhuang1 "Triple White Makeup." Essentially this consisted of matte white highlights in three areas: the forehead, the nose, and the chin. Many paintings depict this form of makeup. We used a combination of white eyeshadow and very pale matte highlighter built up in layers—otherwise it doesn’t show up on camera. Blush on Hanfu makeup is typically much stronger than in modern makeup. Color-wise it’s usually more of a red-orange color. It’s used similarly to contour or bronzer sometimes, so it was applied in large areas on the cheeks to emphasize the paleness of the three highlighted regions.

宋代后半身像　冊　徽宗后 Huizong's Empress, Taiwan National Palace Museum 故宮博物館

Ornamentation: Facial ornamentation with pearls was especially popular during Song. Location-wise they were usually applied in the same places as the red marks from earlier dynasties. We chose to put them in the 斜紅/xie2 hong2 and 花鈿/hua1 dian4 locations, along the temple and in the center of the forehead, respectively.

Massive shoutout to Yulan, my older sister and cofounder, for her makeup artist skills in this project. Not only did she execute immaculately on the unreasonably tedious and specific notes I gave her despite not being super experienced with traditional Hanfu makeup, she was on her feet actively working practically nonstop for 10 hours straight, both days, no lunch breaks; plus I was badgering her every five minutes to offer extremely annoying minute opinions on the lip shape and the time schedule.

Hair

宋錢選招涼仕女, Taiwan National Palace Museum Collection, 故畫001248N000000017, Southern Song

Heavily based on 仕女圖 paintings, Lizi did an incredible job. The main feature of this was the deerskin crown (more on that in separate post), but the other thing I requested from her was the loops framing the temples, sometimes called 雲鬢/yun2 bin4 "cloud temples" or 抱面/bao4 mian4 "wrapping face." A common way to accessorize these was with the half-moon combs (they're supposed to be made of jade or something but these ones are plastic because Budget).

Accessories

The Song Dynasty accessories were the most extensive out of the six looks. A couple hair accessories came out of Lizi’s collection, but I handmade the three main ones during dead week/RRR week: the necklace, earrings, and deerskin crown.

五代南唐周文矩荷亭奕釣仕女圖　軸 Ladies Fishing by a Lotus Pavillion by 周文矩 Zhou Wenjv, Taiwan National Palace Museum 故宮博物館

Necklace: Very simple alternating beads strung on 0.6mm Griffon silk cord. The red beads are bamboo coral, and the clear ones are Czech glass. I usually use Fire Mountain Gems for jewelry materials (fun fact I used to make bank in high school making jewelry for literal years, but I stopped to do this ;-;), but the website was being weird so I got these from EarthstoneCo on Etsy.

宋光宗后坐像 Guangzong's Empress Seated Portrait, Taiwan National Palace Museum 故宮博物館

Earrings: Also very simple pearl strand earrings, just some glass pearls threaded onto a head pin. Emily’s ears aren’t pierced so these ones are clip-ons with plated gold hardware. Idk where these beads came from though I kinda just had them lying around.

Deerskin crown: See main post for construction process and research with sources. Made of an empty roll of packaging tape, cardstock cut from a shoebox lid, and some minky fleece with deer print. The pins are from Taobao I didn’t make them.

Works Cited [MMQ]

Works Cited [MMQ]