"Call her briar rose or smth tho bc those 12 ft long braids kept picking up thorns on the hills" - Yulan
Pt. 2 of our AAPI series: Meet Esther, our model for the Macaron set! 🍬
A born-and-raised Bay Area resident of Chinese-Mongolian heritage aptly born in the Year of the Horse, Esther works in software engineering and enjoys baking, thrifting, and bouldering in her free time. We chose Esther for this look to help represent the bridge between Mongolian / northern steppe heritage and the Central Plains influences that shaped this style of hanfu.
Our Macaron set is named after a Chinese horse pun: “馬卡龍” is the transliteration of “macaron,” but literally reads “horse-card-dragon.” Keeping with the dessert theme, we designed this set in pastel confectionary colors and styled Esther with pastel eyeshadow shades to match! 🍭
Historically, this outfit draws from Northern Dynasty dress and the legacy of the “胡服騎射” policy — “wearing Hu (non-Han) clothing and shooting from horseback.” During the Warring States period, King Wuling of Zhao promoted the adoption of cavalry-friendly clothing elements associated with non-Han horse-riding peoples of the northern steppes, many connected to the lands of present-day Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. Over time, these styles became integrated into Hanfu. The pants in the Macacron set, for example, are a hybrid of hundred-pleat skirt and lantern pants, literally “百褶燈籠褲” or hundred-pleat lantern pants. The belt is made of imitation Songjin brocade, and features a pattern of golden horses galloping through waves, humorously titled “馬上有錢” 🧧
For styling, we gave Esther dramatic 12-foot-long twin carabiner braids, a modern nod to braided hairstyles long associated with many nomadic steppe cultures for beauty, identity, and practicality on horseback. And if you catch a glimpse of her nails, they’re hand-painted press-ons featuring horse artwork from a small studio in Inner Mongolia!
For AAPI Month, we’re celebrating the many ways heritage moves: across borders, across generations, and across the stories we choose to wear. 🐎
CREDITS
Model: Esther Sue (ig: @/esthers_ue)
Hair: 糖糖 Tangtang (me, ig: @/tang.tang.mm)
Makeup: 玉藍 Yulan / Chlobalt Blue (ig: @/chlobaltblue)
Photography & Editing: Hong Majaya (ig: @/hongwithcamera), Sylvia Gong (ig: @/sybiashoots)
Horses: Giddyup Productions (ig: @/giddyup_productions)
Weapons: Christabel Choi (ig: @/christabel_choi), Haydon Fu (ig: @/fuhaydon), Kevin Wong (@ktw-shu)
Additional Assistance: Faye Sun
Location: Sunol, California, USA
Clothing: Cloud9 Hanfu 九雲閣 (ig: @cloud9hanfu), 馬卡龍 Macaron LNY26
Earrings: 金马贺岁 by 黛组学DaiStudio
Braid extensions: 梦想成真假发
Shoes: 清欢阁
Nails: 蒙古马 by TanghesNail 指尖造物
Pt. 3 of our AAPI series: Meet Tara, our model for the Ferghana set! 🐎
Another born-and-raised Bay Area resident also born in the Year of the Horse, Tara is of Persian & Han-Taiwanese heritage and studies fashion in San Francisco. She enjoys pilates, yoga, sewing, and ice hockey, and is a member of the ice crew for the San Jose Sharks! We chose Tara for this look because her heritage beautifully reflects the cultural exchange between Central Asia and China — almost like the Silk Road embodied in one person.
The Ferghana set is named after the namesake legendary horses of the Fergana Valley, known in premodern China as “heavenly horses” and famed for their speed and stamina. Its Chinese title, 君馬黃, comes from a Tang dynasty poem about friendship despite differences in origin & background — a fitting phrase for both the multi-ethnic Tang world and our AAPI Month theme of diaspora. 🐴
The robe itself is inspired by a Northern Dynasty predecessor of the Tang round-collared robe: a high-collared, narrow-sleeved silhouette suited for the cold winds of the steppes and introduced to the Central Plains by the horse-riding Xianbei peoples. The print features a linked-bead pattern with confronted horses inside pearl roundels, a motif associated with Persian, Byzantine, Greco-Bactrian, and Central Asian art that became popular in medieval China through trade, migration, and cultural exchange.
For styling, we brought this East / West remix into California: blue jeans tied to San Francisco’s Gold Rush history, red cowboy boots, and our cowboy-weimao hybrid — a red cowboy hat reimagined with the veil of a Tang-style 帷帽 riding hat. Tara’s makeup draws from historical recreations of Tuoba Xianbei styling seen in cave murals and figurines, including the red forehead mark, while her braids are another nod to the long history of braided hairstyles among many nomadic steppe peoples.
As we close out AAPI Month, we’re honoring identity as something layered, diasporic, and always in motion. 🐎
(there's two more shoot presentation posts with the individual pics in them bc of tumblr's image limit, this post has all the gay duo pics)
Happy AAPI Month from Cloud9! 🐎 For this Year of the Horse, we wanted to tell a story of diaspora and cultural remixing: across grasslands, oceans, cultures, and nations.
The two looks featured in this shoot, Ferghana (君馬黃) and Macaron (馬卡龍), draw from the historical exchange between the Central Plains and the Eurasian steppes: horse-riding nomads from the northwest frontiers like the Xianbei (鮮卑) peoples, Central Asian motifs from Persian and Greco-Bactrian trade, garment evolutions adapted for a life on horseback, Ferghana horses, and more.
Born and raised in the Bay Area ourselves, we wanted to reimagine the rolling steppes of Northern Asia in the grassy hills of California, mirroring the cultural exchange of East and West. Whereas these hanfu silhouettes arose from the intermixing of West/Central Asian and East Asian influences, we sought to incorporate some of the American “West” in our looks as well.
We paired cowboy boots, blue jeans (famously patented in SF during the Gold Rush), a cowboy-weimao (帷帽) hybrid hat, both modern and traditional bows, swords, and of course horses 🐴 with our styles from the steppes to bring in the spirit of California’s western frontier.
Each of the amazing collaborators in this project carries their own diasporic heritage and hails from California’s SF Bay Area; both models and our main photographer were even born in the Year of the Horse! For this AAPI month, we’re hoping that this photoshoot reflects what it means to inherit many histories, live between worlds, and create something new from all of them ✨
"So do we kiss now, or..." - Tara
CREDITS
Models: Esther Sue (ig: @/esthers_ue), Tara Yaghmaei (ig: @/tara_yaghmaei)
Hair: 糖糖 Tangtang (me, ig: @/tang.tang.mm)
Makeup: 玉藍 Yulan / Chlobalt Blue (ig: @/chlobaltblue)
Photography & Editing: Hong Majaya (ig: @/hongwithcamera), Sylvia Gong (ig: @/sybiashoots)
Horses: Giddyup Productions (ig: @/giddyup_productions)
Weapons: Christabel Choi (ig: @/christabel_choi), Haydon Fu (ig: @/fuhaydon), Kevin Wong (@ktw-shu)
Additional Assistance: Faye Sun
Location: Sunol, California, USA
(specific clothing & accessory credits to be listed in individual posts)
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.)
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.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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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
^ srces wip for late ming at time of post (ill add them in gradually in the next few days)
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
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
Background
History
Entering into the Ming Dynasty I figured I should give some context on how this will be split up. The Ming Dynasty lasted for nearly three centuries (depending on whether or not you count Southern Ming), and lots of mamianqun development—especially as relevant to today’s Hanfu movement—happened here. Four of the six design versions for this series are dedicated to the Ming Dynasty.
This is a helpful graphic of the Ming Dynasty timeline. We usually refer to smaller time periods within a dynasty by the era name of the emperor at the time, e.g. the xth year of xxx’s reign.
Src: Wikipedia/Wikimedia commons, List of Emperors of the Ming Dynasty, Timeline
The rules for where the cutoffs for early/mid/late Ming aren't super well-established, so that part is often up to audience discretion. For many historical applications, it's often not as simple as just splitting the dynasty into four chronologically equal sections: the density of important events might be different at different points, and the development of the whole time period may not scale linearly with time. Often historians will take into account the actual events and economic activity at different points in time when splitting up the eras.
For the Ming Dynasty, for example, usually people split it up into three or four big chunks: early Ming or beginning Ming is when the dynasty was first being established, middle Ming when it's already been established but has changes over time, and then late Ming when the dynasty starts to decline. Middle Ming is longer than the other two so that sometimes gets chopped in half.
There are also different ways to name a set of 4 time periods—I used 初/中前/中後/晚 because these are very face-value names easily read by partially-literate people in mandarin, literally "beginning/middle front/middle back/late," but sometimes the mid-early period can be referred to as 盛 / sheng4 / "flourishing" (this is the case with the Tang Dynasty) while the mid-late is just 中, or sometimes the mid-late period will be called 晚 and the late period called 末 / mo4 / "ending," in which case the mid-early period would just be 中.
For this project I’ve divided it up roughly like this. You'll notice that the each of the time periods are not necessarily the same length as the others. You’ll also notice that the four zones overlap—this is on purpose, to hedge the time zone a little bit.
Src: Wikipedia/Wikimedia commons, List of Emperors of the Ming Dynasty, Timeline, annotated
Generally early Ming irrefutably refers to the first two substantial reigns, that of the 洪武 / hong2 wu3 / "vastly martial" emperor and the 永樂 /yong3 le4 / "eternal joy" emperor (sorry Jianwen emperor but you were only there for like four years), as in probably everyone would agree that these two periods belong to early Ming. Technically 明初 is closer in sentiment to "beginning Ming," but “early” seems more standard for referring to historical periods in English. The rest of the period is kinda blurry in terms of where it ends, so I tried to stick to the earliest sources as references for this design.
The Skirt: Research & Evidence
Artifacts
My primary source for this set is from 無錫錢達周氏墓 / wu2 xi1 qian2 da2 zhou1 shi4 mu4 / "Qianda Zhoushi mausoleum in Wuxi city." This site is dated back to the Yongle period, 1402–1424CE. There's a report (太湖流域出土的明代早期女性服饰 / tai4 hu2 liu2 yu4 chu1 tu3 de0 ming2 dai4 zao3 qi2 nv3 xing4 fu2 shi4 / "Early Ming Dynasty Women's Clothing Unearthed from the Taihu River Basin") specifically focused on early Ming women’s clothing written about these pieces by 趙豐 / zhao4 feng1 / Zhao Feng. There are a few places where you can find this article online, but you have to poke around to find a stable one that the images will load for; the one I linked is Sina news and it works right now but it might not later.
Zhao Feng is an extremely accomplished textile researcher & professor at China Silk Museum and Zhejiang Sci-Tech University; his work pops up everywhere in Hanfu research and I highly recommend any work with his name on it.
There were a number of clothing artifacts unearthed from this site, but the most complete ones were this three-piece set including a skirt, a long-sleeved inner top, and a short-sleeved outer top. You can find the whole set in China Silk Museum's collection database.
Src: 趙豐, 湖流域出土的明代早期女性服饰 "Early Ming Dynasty Women's Clothing Unearthed from the Taihu River Basin"
Focusing on the skirt, a sketch from the report clearly shows the same two-panel construction, with each panel being made of 3 full-widths of fabric + 1 half-width. Each panel has 8 total pleats (aka 4 pairs), which you can see represented by the zigzag lines in the diagram. At the center (four pleats in), you can see that the direction of the pleats reverses, resulting in two mirrored sets of pleats that point towards each other.
Src: 趙豐, 湖流域出土的明代早期女性服饰 "Early Ming Dynasty Women's Clothing Unearthed from the Taihu River Basin"
Below is a photo from the China Silk Museum's entry for the skirt itself. I've put it next to an annotated version that I made to help you see the pleats and construction better. At first glance it may look like a regular pleated skirt. It can be hard to tell what's a wrinkle from being stored for so long and what's an actual pleat line—the key is to look at where the pleats are sewn down at the waistband, as well as how they lay at the hemline.
The flat skirt doors are colored in green, and the outside pleat lines are outlined in red and blue: red is the pleats pointing (to the viewer's, aka your) right, and blue is the pleats pointing left. You'll see that the central red and blue pleat lines on each side meet in a ^ shape where they reverse directions. This would be the point where either side of your hips would be.
Src: 素紗裙, China Silk Museum
So you see this is very clearly a mamianqun. You may also be able to see from these photos that this mamianqun has trapezoidal folds: while it's not very pronounced, the waistband curves up on either side because the pleats are slanted so that the bottom is wider than the top, resulting in a 'sunburst' pleat pattern. In modern hanfu-making terms this would probably be classified as 微梯形 / wei1 ti1 xing2 / slight trapezoidal shape: the pleats lean out a little bit, but not by much. The display, too, tacks the skirt's pleats down to show the trapezoidal shape of the skirt. This way you get a flared-out silhouette when you put it on.
You can compare this to earlier mamianqun from the Yuan Dynasty post, which have straight knife pleats: the straight pleats allow the waistband to lay flat, rather than being curved.
According to the report, each skirt door is 17cm wide. The skirt head is 129cm wide, and the hem is 27+56+56+56+27.5+56+56+54.5= 389cm wide.
Design
Skirt
The design for the early Ming version of 龍馬附圖 Metamorphosis is a slight trapezoidal-pleat 馬面裙 with a black body. This skirt uses 6 meters of fabric and has 5 pairs of pleats on each side. That's one more pair of pleats than the Zhoushimu artifact, but I wanted to show a level of progression from the Yuan Dynasty design, so both of them have an extra pair of pleats added.
The black body material is a custom-woven jacquard polyester. Unfortunately the pattern is kind of hard to see in photos because it's a black fabric, but it's a combination of three images: (1) the Cloud9 stamp logo, (2) a section of flower filigree, and (3) a symbol I illustrated based on a representation of the 洛書 / luo4 shu1 / "fallen document." They're arranged in a diagonal checkerboarded pattern with the first two images alternating.
Since all the mamianqun fabrics are versions of each other (and also I keep running out of image limits) I've decided to save the lore behind the fabric design for its own post (and there is a LOT of lore). I'll go through every single designed/illustrated element in that post, since a lot of them are repeated throughout all the skirt fabrics, but these are the three elements used in the solid black fabric.
Other Outfit Pieces
Cami/underlayer: 主腰 / zhu3 yao1 / "Zhuyao Bodice"
L: Wikimedia Commons, 墮胎產亡嚴寒大暑孤魂眾.jpg, Buddhist painting of Ming Dynasty. Death from miscarriage, severe cold and great heat, Baoning Temple, Ming Dynasty.
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. Along with depictions in paintings, several Zhuyao artifacts have been found in the past. Above is part of a Ming Dynasty painting from Baoning Temple dated to have been made during the Tianshun era between 1457 and 1463 (陳玉女, 《成大歷史學報》第三十一號, p73, "寶寧寺的水陸畫推測是天順年間"). The woman in red is wearing a zhuyao that's visible inside her long-sleeved shirt. Ours is made of teal jacquard viscose and lined with a robin's egg silk-cotton-poly mix, with a column of red bead buttons.
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. Cut extremely wide, it's held in place with a fabric belt through three belt loops distributed along the waistband and can be folded to accommodate an extremely wide range of waist sizes while not being elastic at all. Ours is made of red jacquard viscose with a matching belt.
Based on this artifact from the aforementioned Zhoushi mausoleum, the inner shirt is a long-sleeved top constructed with a parallel collar. Duichuanjiao, or "parallel-worn-crossed," means that the garment can be worn crossed over or open like a normal parallel-collar top. Often designs with this intent will have ties, s slight slope to the collar angle, or most importantly an especially wide bust to facilitate this. The result is a crossed collar that drapes down the body a little differently from a garment that's constructed in a crossed way. This artifact has a contrasting collar going halfway down the body as well as sleeve cuffs, which we reflected in our design, which has a teal rayon body and red details.
TL: 绢短袖衫&绮长袖衫&绢裙, China Silk Museum // TR: Annotated ver of prev, red highlighting (wearer's) right collar and green highlighting left collar piece // BR: 绣花卉纹缘素罗短袖夹衣, China Silk Museum
The outer layer for this set is very similar to the inner with some differences: its sleeve length is shorter and it's lined, two features indicating that it's a 披襖 / pi1 ao3 / coat; another more descriptive way to refer to these is 半袖短襖 / ban4 xiu4 duan3 ao3 / half-sleeve short lined top. The artifact shown above is also a part of the Zhoushi outfit. Two clues tell us that it's meant to be worn crossed: first, the collar piece is uneven; one side is longer than the other, because as you can see in the bottom right picture, once it's crossed over, the missing part on the (wearer's) left collar gets covered. Second, there's a tie on the outside of the (wearer's) left armpit, which must be meant to connect to the tie in the center. Notice that this artifact is worn right-over-left as opposed to the traditional left-over-right: this is a hint of residual Mongolian influence left over from the Yuan Dynasty, still abundant during Early Ming. Because most hanfu enthusiasts are used to crossing things left-over-right, though, our design still has its ties placed in the traditional locations rather than following the artifact's design.
Other Styling
L: Photography by Lizi Studio // R: Wikimedia Commons, 仁孝文皇后徐氏（明太宗（成祖））.jpg, National Palace Museum (Taipei)
Makeup didn't move much here either, but there are a few key points. First, the pearl ornamentation on the face fell slightly out of popularity compared to the Song Dynasty, where you could see they were just... slapping them on everywhere. Pearls were still popular, just not directly on the face. Brows were fairly evenly curved, the lip shape fairly natural (by hanfu standards anyway). This did not stop me from squinting over Yulan's shoulder while she was doing the lip makeup and saying "hmm, I think you can go even smaller actually" like fifty times + being a general pest.
Hair maintained the middle part from the previous dynasty to now. Most Ming Dynasty hairstyles have hair pulled away from the face, leaving the temples clear, and a loop of hair hanging down at the neck—there are many different ways to make this loop; for this look Lizi secured it very simply with red string.
Accessories
Hair accessories were fairly minimalistic, only used in a few places as delicate ornamentation. The ones used here are handmade 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 (you can find them at a lot of craft fairs in that area!). 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.
Random aside:
Not a lot of people know this, but chanhua is also known by another name: 春仔花—spring flowers. This is a term originating in the Minnan dialect (a good clue is that it uses the character 仔 instead of 子, which is much more common in southern min). Its pronunciation is written as tshun-á-hue in peh-oe-ji, but since nobody knows how to read peh-oe-ji these days I think it's closest to cun3 a0 hui1 in pinyin (don't come after me, I know the tones and the exact vowel/consonant sounds aren't the same this is just my best approximation because most people on here will be more familiar with pinyin).
Also called bride-flowers, within this context they were traditionally associated with blessings, weddings, and new beginnings—hence the spring name. In the 1800's the southern craft of spring flowers were also brought to Taiwan by immigrants crossing over the strait, where artisans continued to craft them. While certain styles of chanhua has become popular in the hanfu community as accessories, I also encourage you to look up some of the more traditional framed works, dioramas, entire scenes made out of spring flowers. The style is a little different from the chanhua popular with hanfu, but the number of things they manage to depict with this craft is really astounding.
TR: 王玺家族墓 | 金葫芦耳坠（一对）, 四川省文物考古研究院文物圖片庫
Earrings: The hulu is back! Seriously, people went crazy for the gourd shape for a very long time. Above top right pic is a gold gourd earring in Sichuan Archaeology's online database that's dated to the 8th year of the Tianshun Era, 1464CE.
I made a second version of hulu earrings, also with some beads I had lying around: a larger pearl at the bottom and a smaller imitation-jade (it's probably glass or something) bead at the top. I put a small 26 gauge wire coil at the top to imitate the thinner mouth of the gourd, and then allowed it to spiral down over the two beads to meet the bottom of the gourd, just to bring everything together. I disguised the end of the head pin and where the wire ended up with a spacer.
Initially I had these on normal clip-on findings (top left pic), but I didn't love the way that looked, so instead I attached these to spring-back clip-on hoops because Emily doesn't have her ears pierced. I think they look very convincing as going through her earlobe!
^ srces wip for early ming at time of post (ill add them in gradually in the next few days)
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
We’re heading into the Middle Ming territory now. Technically “Middle” includes all of the time between the establishment of the empire and the decline of the empire. Where the “establishment period” ends is iffy, but the decline is generally known to have started during the Wanli era.
I’ve split Middle Ming into two sections, mid-early and mid-late. However, while I’ve drawn my timeline this way, the transition between mid-early and mid-late is probably the murkiest line out of all of them, and the designs for both periods skew significantly later within their allotted years. This is because a lot of interesting stuff related to fashion happened in the mid-late Ming.
A more accurate phrasing would be “early mid-late Ming” and “later mid-late Ming,” but that’s a massive mouthful, so like. Just work with me here ;-;
This is a very rough split. I chose to do it this way for a couple reasons: first, because there were two main varieties of mamianqun that hadn’t been represented yet in the project, and second, because certain types of sources lend themselves sliiiightly better to one end of middle Ming than the other; for example, I found a ton of portraits of women specifically from mid-late Ming, but there were lots of burial sites from both mid-early and mid-late Ming, so in order to represent both I placed inspiration emphasis more heavily on portraits for mid-late and more heavily on artifacts for mid-early.
The Commercialization of Silk
Something very interesting began happening to textiles in the Ming Dynasty, which I think is extremely relevant to the situation of the world today: commercialization. I want to be careful here, because we are today all victims of capitalism and thus are very ready to condemn it, and it certainly is screwing most everyone over (and it would eventually screw the Ming Dynasty over too). But to its credit, industrialization drove the development of technology and efficiency up at a terrifying pace, something that would not have happened if not for the concept of greed. Whether or not that’s a worthwhile exchange I will leave up to you to decide.
I suck at economics, so take this with a grain of salt, but to my understanding the setup for this shift goes even further back to the success of the Song Dynasty, then the Yuan Dynasty, and then finally the Ming. A lot of different factors including the industrialization of textile weaving, the introduction of cotton, and the rise of conspicuous consumption contribute to this, but the gist of it is that People Wanted More Stuff.
Src: 大明衣冠——泰州明墓出土服饰专题展, 泰州市博物館 Taizhou City Museum (permanent exhibit)
How do we make more? One method is technology—make better devices that speed up the tasks necessary for production. For example, the invention of the 改機 / gai3 ji1 / "changed loom" in the Hongzhi era (1488–1505CE) by 林洪 / lin2 hong2 / Lin Hong, a type of double heddle/double treadle loom, allowed weavers to more efficiently weave complex fabrics including cloud brocade.
But another very very big one is division of labor. Where silkworm cultivation, harvesting, spinning, dyeing, and weaving might have originally all been done under one roof by the rural women within their households, now there are factories and workshops located in big cities dedicated JUST to weaving, and families that might focus JUST on silkworm cultivation and raw materials. This speeds up the process significantly. It also meant that the people in charge of weaving might have more time to get really really good at weaving, and even figure out some ways to weave more and more complicated things, just like any of the industrial revolutions in the west.
Francesca Bay has a really good paper on the development of the textile industry in Imperial China. She’s looking at it from a feminist perspective, focused on the shifting role of women; it’s a really good paper that’s not too hard/dense to read and I’d check it out if you have time. In a nutshell, though, between Song and Qing, textile production shifted from its traditional almost “agricultural” form that could be contained within the household to a full-blown industry—with division of labor, more government oversight, etc.
This moved factors of textile production out of people’s households and into urban workshops, almost like factories. Bay’s paper focuses on how this shift took agency away from women, which I find deeply and viscerally sad. I almost wonder if part of the later rise in conspicuous consumption, especially around women, was a reaction to this loss, like an alternative way to exert power over themselves through their way of dress. From a purely practical perspective though, this did lead to some advancements in textile production that weren’t accessible before (more on that later).
I will continue to elaborate on this in the next post for mid-late Ming, since a LOT of stuff happens then; this is just a little foreshadowing for what’s coming next. For now all that’s happening is that rich people are ignoring laws and wearing whatever they want as long as they can afford it (as rich people do), and things are getting more and more fancy.
Zhuanghua Cloud Brocade
Src: 纹样探微与墓主推测—由长辛店618厂明墓引发的思考 Exploration of Patterns and Inference of Tomb Owner: Thoughts on the Ming Tomb Located at Factory #618 in Changxindian, by 周少华 Zhou Shaohua, fig 43, 44 (detail of zhuanghua skirt artifact)
Perhaps one of China’s greatest achievements in textile technology was the development of 妝花 / zhuang1 hua1 / "Zhuanghua" brocade. It's a sub-technique of Nanjing cloud brocade, often considered its most difficult and most representative form. The technique most likely took shape during the Ming Dynasty, supplanting the 織錦 / zhi1 jin3 / Zhijin brocade technique that had previously been the most popular during the Yuan Dynasty.
The earliest known record of the term zhuanghua appearing was in the 天水冰山錄, a record that features Capulets-vs-Montague levels of family beef and art forgery between the Wang and Yan families, but that's not super relevant—all you gotta know is that there's a record of a guy called 嚴嵩/ yan2 song1 / Yan Song (quite a character if you look him up) from whom 14,000 bolts of fabric, including zhuanghua brocade, were confiscated.
The record was dated to the Jiajing era, but I think that if the record was using the phrase zhuanghua without any further explanation, it stands to reason that the term had to be common knowledge by then, so the technique had to have been around for long enough to a) get a name of its own and b) circulate far enough for that name to become common knowledge. So I think it’s fairly likely that the technique had been around for a while before that record. Plus this is just the record we have access too; there could very well have been other records mentioning zhuanghua brocade that were lost or even just not as well-known. Just for the purposes of this design project, which does require some hand-waving and simplification, I’m tentatively going to be attributing the invention of zhuanghua to mid-early Ming.
These days most mamianqun that you see labeled as zhuanghua mamianqun are really imitation zhuanghua mamianqun, because the zhuanghua technique can only be done by hand; there are currently no technologies that can automate this specific process. As a result, zhuanghua cloud brocade is very very expensive, usually only used sparingly for small applications like accessories, book covers, etc. instead of large clothing items that require several meters of the stuff. There are a lot of people who try to pass off machine-woven stuff as zhuanghua brocade especially online though, so like, rule of thumb, if you cannot feel your soul leaving your body as you gaze upon the price tag it's probably not authentic. Do not underestimate people's willingness to just straight up Lie.
The Skirt: Research & Evidence
Artifacts
My primary source for this set is from 無錫七房橋錢樟夫婦墓 / wu2 xi1 qi1 fang2 qiao2 qian2 zhang1 fu1 fu4 mu4 / "Qianzhang Couple mausoleum in Qifangqiao, Wuxi city." It's the burial site of Qianzhang, 華貞/hua2 zhen1/Huazhen, his wife, also located in the Taihu area in Wuxi city in the village Qifangqiao (literally seven-house bridge), a village whose name comes from the seven-courtyard Qian family mansion. Qianzhang was a member of the Qian family who lived from 1486 to 1505CE. Numerous well-preserved clothing artifacts were found belonging to his wife Huazhen, who married him when she was 20 years old.
A full report of this tomb can be found in the book 無錫前房橋明代錢氏家族墓 / wu2 xi1 qian2 fang2 ming2 dai4 qian2 shi4 jia1 zu2 mu4 / Wuxi Qianfangqiao Ming Dynasty Qian Family Mausoleum, where it's listed under M1. Excavated in 2012, the tomb had two main skirts that the 百褶馬面 / bai3 zhe2 ma3 mian4 / hundred-pleat mamianqun are based on.
M1:S9 - 四季花鳥紋織金妝花緞襴裙 / si4 ji4 hua1 niao3 wen2 zhi1 jin1 zhuang1 hua1 duan4 lan2 qun2 / Four Season Flowers and Birds Patterned Gold-Woven Zhuanghua Satin Skirt
Src: 彩版87/Photoset 87 (1 and 2), 四季花鳥紋織金妝花緞襴裙 (M1:S9), 無錫前房橋明代錢氏家族墓地, 無錫市文物保護中心 Wuxi City Artifact Conservation Center, 無錫市鍚山區文化體育和旅遊句 Wuxi City Yangshan Area Culture & Travel Department
The first is S9, the 四季花鳥紋織金妝花緞襴裙. This is the main supporting reference. The first thing you might notice is that it has an extremely strong curvature around the waistband in the drawing. This is partially exaggerated to better show the skirt structure, but from the photos it does seem fairly clear that the skirt is constructed with trapezoidal pleats, with the bottom wider than the top, resulting in a curved waistband. The curvature is also maintained in the technical line drawing, below.
Src: 圖六 Figure 6, 裙形制圖, M1:9, pg 204, 無錫前房橋明代錢氏家族墓地, 無錫市文物保護中心 Wuxi City Artifact Conservation Center, 無錫市鍚山區文化體育和旅遊句 Wuxi City Yangshan Area Culture & Travel Department
From far away it looks very similar to a normal pleated skirt, but it is indeed made up of two panels in the same way as the mamianqun and has four skirt 'doors,' unpleated areas, with two of them overlapping. Said doors are much narrower to make room for all those tiny pleats—the biggest is 24cm, with some of the others smaller—but they're definitely there. According to the report, each of the two panels are made up of four loom-widths of fabric, each about 60cm, for a total of eight widths of fabric.
There is also a reversal in the pleat direction halfway through each pleated section as expected of mamianqun, it's just harder to see because the pleats are so small/there are so many of them. Each side has 18-15 pairs of pleats (uneven, the sections closer to the middle skirt doors have more pleats than the other side). The skirt is 93.5cm long with a 139cm long waistband and a 120x2cm long waist ribbon on one side (other side not specified).
Src: 彩版87/Photoset 87 (3), 四季花鳥紋織金妝花緞襴裙 (M1:S9), 無錫前房橋明代錢氏家族墓地, 無錫市文物保護中心 Wuxi City Artifact Conservation Center, 無錫市鍚山區文化體育和旅遊句 Wuxi City Yangshan Area Culture & Travel Department
The fabric for this skirt is zhuanghua cloud brocade with multicolored gold thread. It has a base pattern of birds & flowers, with what's generally organized into three horizontal bands: the first has lions, the second is an yingluo beaded pattern, and the third at the bottom has leaping stags.
Src: 彩版94/Photoset 94 (1 and 2), 四合如意雲紋緞錦裙 (M1:S19), 無錫前房橋明代錢氏家族墓地, 無錫市文物保護中心 Wuxi City Artifact Conservation Center, 無錫市鍚山區文化體育和旅遊句 Wuxi City Yangshan Area Culture & Travel Department
S19 is a skirt with similar construction but made of a simpler brocade fabric with the same pattern all-over. Each of the skirt panels on this one are made of three widths (also 60cm) of fabric, for a total of six widths of fabric. This skirt is lined, with a layer of plain silk and silk wadding on the inside.
Src: 圖六 Figure 6, 裙形制圖, M1:[sic]20, pg 204, 無錫前房橋明代錢氏家族墓地, 無錫市文物保護中心 Wuxi City Artifact Conservation Center, 無錫市鍚山區文化體育和旅遊句 Wuxi City Yangshan Area Culture & Travel Department
The construction of this skirt is very similar, with the same two-panel structure and 15-18 pairs of mirrored pleats. The largest skirt door is 22cm wide, the full skirt length is 92cm, the waist length is 118cm, and the labeled skirt ribbon is 118x2cm.
The pattern is a diamond-like ruyi pattern with clouds on plainer brocade. This skirt doesn't use zhuanghua techniques but is still a good reference for the 百褶 / bai3 zhe2 / 'hundred-pleat' mamianqun structure.
Another skirt artifact reference I used was the 妝花織金藍緞裙 from 孔府舊藏 / kong3 fu2 jiu4 zang4, the private collection of the Kong family mansion in Shandong. Because it was part of a private collection and not excavated, it's in extremely good condition and still preserves its original deep blue color.
L: Splendour of Skirts: The Enduring Appeal and Contemporary Resonance of the Mamianqun, Tsinghua University Art museum (Sept 2025–Mar 29 [it's still there!]) // R: It's the back side of the skirt, but I lost the source :(((( but I remember I think it was a scan of a book and it had 孔府舊藏服飾 somewhere on it, but the name is too general and I can't find it anymore
This skirt isn't dated to any particular part of the Ming Dynasty, but construction and pattern-wise it looks very similar to the other two skirt references from the Qianzhang burial site: it similarly has a main base pattern of winding flowers taking up the majority of the top half of the skirt, then three (ish) bands of different patterns going across the bottom half. The first band is of flying phoenixes, the second is a thin one with some flowers, and the bottom-most band is a similar yingluo beading pattern. The waistband is similarly made of a different plainer fabric than the rest of the skirt.
Construction-wise, the skirt is 88cm in length, slightly shorter than the other two artifacts, with a 104cm long waistband. The pleats also appear to be trapezoidal from the curvature of the waist. You can see at least six seams from the backside/inside of the skirt (theres a photo but im not posting it because idk the source), though there might be more hidden in the pleats/behind one of the interior skirt doors, so we can safely say that each panel was made of at least three widths of fabric. Each panel seems to have 5-6 pairs of pleats in it (it's a little hard to tell since they're no longer prssed very crisply and the fabric is patterned), so much fewer than the Qianzhang tomb artifacts.
Design
Skirt
The Mid-Early Ming skirt is the fanciest out of all six designs. It can be described as a 滿地金百褶馬面裙 / man3 di4 jin1 ma3 mian4 qun2 / gold-ground hundred-pleat mamianqun (with some caveats). It uses six meters of fabric. There are ten trapezoidal pleats on each side and a narrow skirt door.
滿地金 means gold-grounded. Usually 'ground' technically refers to the base/background color of a fabric that designs are woven now. I would only tentatively call this skirt gold-grounded, because the background color for many of the parts is black instead of gold. However, if you take a closer look at the blue skirt from the Kong family mansion, which is sort of the OG 滿地金 skirt, you'll see that most of the fabric also has blue, not gold, as the background color—rather I think the 'gold-grounded' term is referring to how there's gold all over the skirt, rather than only in select areas, which is in line with my fabric design.
I'll talk more about the fabric design in a separate fabric post, but I referenced both the S9 artifact from the Qianzhang tomb site and the blue skirt from the Kong family masion for this. Both skirts have a main base pattern on the top half of the skirt, with three main 'bands' of patterns going across the bottom half of the skirt, with some borders between them. The S9 artifact's background base pattern also returns at a lower location between the second and third pattern bands; my fabric design has the main pattern return between the first and second pattern bands. There are also some repeated 'divider' bands separating the pattern bands, similar to the Kong family mansion artifact's red bands.
The term "hundred-pleat" can be a bit confusing because by itself "hundred pleat" also refers to normal pleated skirts that just have straight knife pleats all the way around. When put in front of mamianqun, though, "hundred-pleat" refers to a specific category of mamianqun that usually have at least 10-12 pairs of pleats on each side, resulting in a noticeably narrower skirt door width. "Hundred" is just an exaggeration to refer to "many."
Usually in order to make room for the pleats, hundred-pleat mamianqun are always made with four widths of fabric, each between 120-180cm wide (most mamianqun are made with either three or four widths of fabric). The S9 Qianzhang tomb artifact used four 60cm widths of fabric per panel, for a totsal of 4*60*2 = 480cm of fabric. The electric loom that our fabric was woven on has a width of 150cm, so each skirt uses 150*4 = 600cm of fabric, but if the loom width had been closer to 120cm, then it would have been 120*4 = 480cm of fabric as well. I wanted to exaggerate the whole age of materialism that started to rise in middle Ming, so I went with the max amount of skirt material (more than 600cm especially with brocaded fabrics tends to get too heavy and uncomfortable).
Other Outfit Pieces
Cami/underlayer: 主腰 / zhu3 yao1 / "Zhuyao Bodice"
Src: 大明衣冠——泰州明墓出土服饰专题展, 泰州市博物館 Taizhou City Museum (permanent exhibit)
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. Shown above is an example from the tomb of 蔡善慧 / cai4 shan4 hui4 / Cai Shanhui, a female war general who died in 1461CE (sorry for the shitty quality public access picture, I have better ones but I'm not supposed to share them hhh). It has a high back with wide straps and buttons/ties down the front. (Refer to the Early Ming Dynasty post for more details.)
Src: 彩版92/Photoset 92 (4), 棉布褲(M1:S17), 無錫前房橋明代錢氏家族墓地, 無錫市文物保護中心 Wuxi City Artifact Conservation Center, 無錫市鍚山區文化體育和旅遊句 Wuxi City Yangshan Area Culture & Travel Department
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 Qian family tomb as the skirt was based off of, artifact S17, a pair of cotton pants. (Refer to the Early Ming Dynasty post for more details.)
Src: 我市两个保护修复项目通过结项验收: 珍贵文物历时五载获“重生”, 鄂州政府网 E'Zhou Government Online, 2023
The cross-collared shirt is a classic—above is an example from a garment restoration report. Ming Dynasty cross collars often have asymmetric lapels and a slight curve to the outer lapel to better contour to the shape of the body. A common sleeve shape for cross-collared shirts are 琵琶袖 / pi2 pa2 xiu4 / Pipa sleeves, an iconic sleeve shape that has a wide belly that narrows up to the wrist. Some also have a contrasting collar detail called a 護領 / hu4 ling3 / collar protector detail, sometimes removable (ours isn't), meant to strengthen/protect the area usually drawn tight around the neck since it's more easily dirtied. Our design has a teal rayon body with red ties, sleeve cuffs, and collar protector.
L: 明鑲金襟素絹短袖夾衫, 常州市武進區博物館 Changzhou City Wujin Area Museum // R: 明代素綾織金龍紋短袖夾衫, 常州市武進區博物館 Changzhou City Wujin Area Museum
The square collar is a unique shape that only emerged during the Ming Dynasty. Square collars almost always have parallel lapels, buttoned in the front. This example is from the tomb of 王洛 / wang2 luo4 / Wang Luo. Since this is a women's garment it's more likely that it belonged to his wife, with whom he was buried, whose surname was 盛 Sheng, and lived from 1459–1540CE. Two very similar square-collar garments were unearthed from this site; both are lined, have short flared sleeves, a separate trim on the collar & lapel, buttons on the top half of the lapel, and then a tie halfway down the top. Ours is a dark inky rayon-polyester blend lined with a pale teal polyester-cotton-silk blend, with rayon trim details and functional metal 子母扣 / zi3 mu3 kou4 / mother-child buttons + a tie at the middle (there are three pairs on ours instead of the two on the artifact; the lapel was prone to gaping when we only had two pairs so we added another one).
Other Styling
Makeup was largely similar to Early Ming, with the lip shape getting slightly thinner and the eyebrows slightly curved. Pearl ornamentation was still a thing but we took it off for this look just for styling purposes.
Hair began to take on the structure of the 三綹頭 / san1 liu3 tou2 / three-strand hairstyle, which got really popular a bit ago as its own thing but can be seen more as sort of a base structure that many hairstyles kind of grow out of. The key parts are the swoop in the back, called a 燕尾 / yan4 wei3 / swallow's tail (there are a few different variations to this, the one we did is a flatter double swallowtail but there are also ones that only have one loop and stand up more), the tuft at the front that sort of looks like the y2k hair bump, and the parts on the side that sort of curve back around the temples. All of these parts join at the top of the head and then you can do whatever you want with the rest. It's a very Ming Dynasty structure with a lot of variations to it.
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.
Earrings: I had fun with this one—these earrings are based on the pair shown above. These are from 定陵墓/ding4 ling2 mu4 in Beijing; they're technically late Ming but there have been similar carved-jade character earrings unearthed from various earlier sites before, I just used these ones because I liked how they looked + I think they went pretty well with the set. The artifact is a stylized version of the character 喜 / xi3 / 'happiness,' with a four-winged moth at the bottom (look at its cute little antennae!), and some red gemstones embedded.
Laser cut pieces + wrapped earrings. I changed out the findings in the end to small circular hoops for pierced ears so we could put them on Tiona.
I laser-cut my version out of 1/8" thick white cast acrylic after recreating the shape by drawing it out digitally + tracing the bitmap with Inkscape to get vector outline. It took a second to get the settings right—I wanted the engraved details to be at a certain depth so that they were visible but subtle, and because the details were so small it was easy for the kerning on the laser cutter to melt through some parts of the character. I cut like 4-5 pairs before I was satisfied with the look. I added extra holes so that I could use 28-gauge brass jewelry wire to wrap red glass beads in the appropriate places.
Fun fact about the prop that Tiona's holding for this set—it's a ruyi scepter carved out of wood from 惜物国风, carved out of African Padauk, a species of tree from central/west African with a unique naturally red coloration. It has a subtle scent to it and it's one of my favorite hanfu props that I own. I got it last year.
^ srces wip for mid-early ming at time of post (ill add them in gradually in the next few days)
