Time-is-a-communist-construct - Blog Posts

I just want to say, before anything else, that I love your blog! It's so helpful to me when I write things. I'm also sorry for how long this ask is going to be. I normally ask anonymously but it won't let me put the photo in.

I really like this hanfu set but I don't know exactly what dynasty it's from, or even if it's actually historically accurate.

I also wanted to ask about the hanfu from Flourished Peony, and how accurate they are. Specifically that one pink round-collar hanfu Mudan wears when she's getting flowers from the mountain that I thought was a men's item, rather than a women's one.

Sorry about the long ask!

Going to answer both of these together since they're about the same show.

About the hanfu in the picture, this is a Ruqun (襦裙) set from the Weijin. The biggest giveaway is the stripe at the sleeves (it looks like 2 stripes but I have another pic of this outfit and you can see it's actually 1 decorative stripe with two bright borders). Also, if you look at this pic below with it untucked in the skirt, you can kind of see that there's a horizontal piece of fabric along the waist area.

If you take a look at my post about the Ruqun (here) you'll see an artefact that's very similar.

For Flourished peony, I'm only going to comment on the hanfu as I don't have enough knowledge about Tang dynasty hair or makeup right now to make any judgements. I'm also not looking at the patterns on the fabrics, I'm literally only looking at the styles of the clothing themselves.

Disclaimer, I haven't watched the show. These photos are from Google and Baidu promotional pics, and I did click through a few eps to take screencaps.

And if anyone has a screencap of, or can let me know which episode, the "pink round-collar hanfu Mudan wears" that's mentioned in the ask I'd really appreciate it (I tried looking for it but couldn't find it T__T)

Looking briefly through some of the posts regarding this show, it seems the production team put a lot of effort into recreating the Tang Dynasty aesthetic, from costumes to props (there are some people who have found props and matched them to museum pieces). For the most part, the clothing seems appropriate for the time period, the only nitpick I'll do is that it seems to mix together clothing styles from early Tang all the way to late Tang (but the show isn't set in a specific period of the Tang Dynasty, so they can kind of get away with that).

Most of the men seem to wear the round-collar robes that was most common during the Tang Dynasty (my post on it here).

This style of qixiong dress (over-bust dress) seems to be most common in this show, and definitely a staple for women's hanfu during the Tang Dynasty.

If you look at the width of her sleeve here, it doesn't appear very wide. Sleeve width became wider and wider during the Tang Dynasty, so looking at these sleeves it seems more early-going-into-Gold-era Tang (my post on Gold-era Tang hanfu here).

This style looks more early-Tang with the very form-fitted sleeve and the non-qixiong skirt. I can't see clearly the pattern of her dress here, but early Tang skirts often had alternating coloured blocks on their skirts (called jianqun/间裙子)(my post on early Tang here and here).

I can't tell clearly if this dress is a qixiong dress, or a hezi dress. Hezi dresses so far are not backed by any artefacts, there are rumours of its existence but nothing has been unearthed to verify it (someone asked me about this, I posted on it here).

Looking at the long outer robe with the wide sleeve, even if this was a qixiong dress, this would be late Tang, edging into the Five Dynasties post-Tang (my post on this here).

In the first pic, the two maids are wearing outfits that are very typical in early Tang. The collars, the little vest/half-sleeve of the shirt, etc.

I'll nitpick that historically, Chinese capes did not have hoods attached. They came separately.

You can see in this pic (from the 1987 Dream of the Red Chambers), the woman is wearing her cape, the man is holding the hood for her.

My personal theory is because of the various hair styles women have, and the various hats/guan (head pieces) men wear, a separate hood offered more flexibility. Like in this pic from Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1994), he's wearing a very tall guan so trying to fit it under a hood that's attached to the cape would be difficult. But this is all just my guesses, don't quote me xD

This maid is wearing a round-collared robe usually associated with men, but actually during the Tang Dynasty it wasn't uncommon for women to wear this style of robe as well.

This man has half the robe on, the other half off his shoulder, displaying the half-sleeve underneath. This was a common way men wore their robes in casual situations (it looks like he's hunting) (my post on this here).

I took this screenshot because you can see the difference in lengths between these two men's robes. One is calf-length, one is ankle-length. Men's robes also got longer as time went on during the Tang Dynasty. It's possible this servant is wearing a shorter robe to make walking easier, but going by the length of the man in red, this should be at least late-Tang Dynasty (post mentioning robe length here).

This outfit's sleeve is very wide, indicating later in the Tang Dynasty. I think people believe form-fitted sleeves were more for younger girls, servants, or women of lower class who had to work and large, wide sleeves were for higher-level women or older women who sat around all day. In actuality, sleeve width was an indication of time period during the Tang Dynasty (for both men and women).

This look is straight out of a Dunhuang Buddhist donor mural. They painted these to commemorate people who were devoted to Buddhism and/or gave a lot of offerings, you can find these murals at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang City today (my post on this here).

I know I said I wouldn't discuss hair but just this one, since it's such an iconic look for the Tang Dynasty. This hairstyle is a clear replica of the Ladies with Flower in their Hair painting (簪花仕女图), but they've changed the clothing. This painting was originally believed to be from the Golden-era or Mid-Tang, but in recent years historians believe it's more likely to be late-Tang or Five Dynasties (possibly even Song Dynasty) painted. Even in China a lot of people still associate it with the Tang Dynasty.

So overall, the show's production team clearly did research to replicate Tang Dynasty clothing. For the most part, they did a good job, no cross-dynasty clothing being tossed around. There's a bit of mish-mash for which period of the Tang Dynasty the clothing's from, but that's not a huge issue. Given some of the crazy costumes that's come out of period dramas in recent years, big applause to the production team to the costuming department.