Why is the Tang suit all-encompassing?

As far as the cultural and economic development of feudal society is concerned, the Tang Dynasty in China is undoubtedly a peak in the history of human civilization. The Tang government not only carried out an open policy to foreign countries, but also allowed foreigners to do business in China to attract foreign students, even allowed foreigners to take the imperial examinations for selecting officials and holding official positions, and adopted an appreciation and tolerance attitude towards foreign culture, art and religion, making Chang 'an, the capital at that time, a cultural exchange center between China and foreign countries. It is particularly worth mentioning that women in the Tang Dynasty did not have to abide by traditional norms. They can wear wide-necked clothes with bare breasts and bare arms, or they can absorb the clothing styles of other countries and wear exotic colors. You can also wear Hu clothes and men's clothing to ride and shoot, and enjoy the freedom of spouse selection and divorce. Rich material foundation and relatively relaxed social environment make the culture of the Tang Dynasty develop unprecedentedly, and the fields of poetry, painting, music and dance are full of stars. In addition, the textile industry, which had laid a solid foundation in the Sui Dynasty, developed greatly in the Tang Dynasty, and the silk reeling and printing and dyeing technology also reached a fairly high level. The variety, output and quality of clothing materials are unprecedented, and the eclectic clothing styles have also become the beautiful fashion admired by the world at that time.

The most striking thing in the costumes of the prosperous Tang Dynasty is women's clothing, as well as women's ever-changing bun, accessories and facial makeup. Tang Nv pays attention to matching clothes, and each set is a unique overall image. People are not on a whim, but according to their own social background, the beauty of clothing art is brought to the extreme. So each collocation has its own distinct personality and interesting cultural background. There are three kinds of women's dresses in the Tang Dynasty, except Hu clothes imported from western culture, and a whole set of men's clothes that dare to break Confucian etiquette.

Let's talk about traditional skirts first. It may not be novel that the coat is short, the gown is long and the bottom is a skirt, but women in the Tang Dynasty wore it in a new way. For example, in the alternate fashion of round neck, square collar, diagonal collar, straight collar and chicken heart collar, it is an innovative move that has never appeared in the previous dynasty. At first, it was mainly worn by court concubines and kabuki. However, it was soon favored by official ladies, which shows that people in the Tang Dynasty were very enlightened. Confucian classics clearly stipulated that clothes should be used to wrap the body tightly, especially for women. Like Tang Nv, the style that the collar is low enough to expose the cleavage above the breast is unprecedented in the ancient China society with strict etiquette.

In the Tang Dynasty, Natalie (date of birth and death unknown) and Zhou Fang (date of birth and death unknown) painted gorgeous and plump women in the palace. In Zhou Fang's "Flower Lady", a beautiful woman wears an off-the-shoulder dress with a large sleeve gauze shirt over her upper body, covering her breasts lightly. Because the painter's technique is realistic, he not only faithfully depicts the delicate and transparent materials of the Tang Dynasty, but also vividly depicts the soft shoulders and arms of women.

In the Tang Dynasty, the beauty of fullness and profusion was advocated, and peony was appreciated when appreciating flowers. Men without shoulders and women without necks were emphasized, and horses should have small heads, thick necks and big hips. It is not difficult to see in the paintings of the Tang Dynasty that Tang Nv made six, eight and twelve skirts to show her fullness, which is not enough, so the style of raising the skirt waist to the armpit appeared, so that the woman's waist could not be seen, and only a circle could be seen.

For the description of Tang skirts, the poet almost tried his best to write wonderful poems. In addition to styles, there are many references about skirt colors. As can be seen from the poem, the skirt color of that year was quite rich, and there were few official constraints. It is good to be good. Only the colors are crimson, apricot yellow, deep purple, moon green, grass green, turmeric and so on. Among them, pomegranate red skirt has the longest popularity. The pomegranate skirt is described in the poems of Li Bai, Du Fu and Bai Juyi. The Song of Yanjing in May describes the popularity of pomegranate skirts, saying that pomegranate flowers are full of rich and gorgeous pomegranate red, and thousands of families buy pomegranate flowers to dye skirts for women at home. You can imagine how spectacular it is. Turmeric skirt is also dyed with plant color, but this plant is a perennial herb of Zingiberaceae, which is different from tulip originated in Asia Minor. The sap of its hypertrophy rhizome and spindle-shaped tuber can dye cloth and give off fragrance. In the mid-Tang Dynasty, the princess's bird skirt was a masterpiece in China's textile and embroidery history. Its skirt is made of bird feathers, one color in the daytime, one color in the light, one color in front and one color in the back. The skirt presents the shape of a bird, which is wonderful.

Women's skirts are not only skirts under tops, but also other styles to supplement or decorate, such as half-arms, short-sleeved shirts. Modern people wear it in summer, but when Tang Nv wears it, he often wears it outside a long-sleeved shirt, which is a bit like a vest. Because the sleeve length is between vest and long sleeve, it is called half arm. It looks graceful and has a wonderful posture.

Women in the Tang Dynasty liked to wear wallets or silk on their arms. The difference between these two kinds of ornaments is that one is wide and the other is short, and they are usually worn on one shoulder. This lifelike effect can be seen from the unearthed female figurines of the Tang Dynasty. Legend has it that there was an open-air banquet in the palace, and Tang Ming gave a big banquet to his ministers. A gust of wind blew Yang Guifei's wallet onto He's hat (it was a hat wrapped in a black silk towel). From this point of view, it may be very light, but of course, it does not rule out the possibility of using heavy wool to keep out the cold. Silk is what we usually call "ribbon". It is long and narrow. It walks forward from the back, drapes over the forearm, and its ends naturally droop. Later generations will never forget this wonderful silk when painting fairies and ladies in ancient costumes.

The foot clothes that match the skirt include cockatoo brocade shoes, shoes made of hemp thread or sandals, which are soft but delicate and light. Besides paintings, we can also see objects in cultural relics unearthed in Xinjiang and other places.

When Tang Nv wears a skirt, he usually doesn't wear a hat. Of course, the corolla is decorative, and he wears a curtain hat to hang the yarn when he goes out. This kind of curtain hat became popular in the early Tang Dynasty, and in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, women even disdained to wear it, and simply rode in a bun. At that time, the hairstyle was changeable, which reflected the luxury of Tang Nv. Only high bun, there are cloud bun, spiral bun, semi-turn bun, anti-wan bun, triangle bun, double-ring Wang Xian bun, Jing Hu bun, Uygur bun, Uman bun, Hubei bun and so on. In addition, there are more than 30 kinds of Twin Bun, vertical practice bun, throwing home, half turn and wandering. Most of these buns are named after shapes, and some are named after ethnic minorities. Today, people can not only see the concrete images of gold hairpin, jade ornaments, flowers and silk flower similar to real flowers, but also see all kinds of exquisite gold and silver jewelry and silk flower objects in unearthed cultural relics.

Although Tang Nv didn't invent facial makeup, it is exotic, luxurious and changeable. Tang Nv put on a lot of makeup on her face, not only with makeup powder, but also with black hair to stroke her eyebrows, rouge on her cheeks, lipstick on her lips, and yellow crescent-shaped "forehead yellow" (also known as "crow yellow") on her forehead. It is said to imitate the makeup of the yellow-faced Buddha of the northwest nationalities. The eyebrows have also been refurbished. It is said that Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty once ordered a painter to draw ten eyebrows, which is also an anecdote left by the romantic emperor in the history of clothing. The names of eyebrow shapes are all beautiful, including "Yuanyang", "Hill", "Three Peaks", "Hanging Beads", "Ridge of the Moon", "Holding a cigarette", "Fanyun" and "Wuyue", plus the folk arch eyebrows, crescent eyebrows and broad eyebrows (Guimei). There should be flowers in the middle of eyebrows, which can be painted with bird feathers, black paper, mother-of-pearl shells, gold foil, fishbone, mica or directly with pigments. I drew a "slanting red" on my eyebrows. Lips with lipstick point out various fashionable lip shapes, and put two soybean-like red spots one centimeter outside the lip corner, which is called "ytterbium". After the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the scope of ytterbium became larger and larger, extending to both sides of the nose, and also changed into the shapes of money, apricots, peaches, birds and flowers. We can still see this image of a female patron with light makeup and a full face of flowers on the murals of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes 6 1 Five Dynasties.

Not all of these facial masks were created by the Tang people, and some of them are legends of the previous generation, with wonderful stories. For example, it is said that the Emperor Wu of the Southern Song Dynasty (363-422) had a daughter named Princess Shouyang. On the seventh day of the first month, Princess Shouyang was walking (lying) in the chapter, and a breeze blew a plum blossom, which just stuck to Princess Shouyang's forehead. It can neither be taken off nor washed off, and it looks beautiful, so it is welcomed by people. This kind of facial decoration called "Shouyang Makeup" or "Plum Makeup" has been with women for a long time in the Tang Dynasty and even in the Song Dynasty. Li Fuyan of the Tang Dynasty wrote in "Continued Mystery"? The betrothal shop records a story: One day, a man named Gu Wei passed by Song Cheng and stayed in an inn in the south. At night, I saw the old man sitting in a bag full of red ropes under the moon. According to China people, under the moon, the old man tied a man and a woman's legs together with a red rope and became husband and wife. Wei stepped forward and asked who his wife was. The old man opened the marriage book and found that a daughter selling vegetables in the north of the city had just turned three. Wei Gu was so angry that he ordered his servant to shoot him. The servant couldn't bear it, so he just stabbed the girl's eyebrow in desperation. Ten years later, Wang Tai, the secretariat, saw that Wei was brave and credible, so he married his adopted daughter. The bride's forehead is decorated with flower buds, but they are not taken off when she takes off makeup at night. Wei Gu was very surprised. She didn't know it was the girl who was stabbed that year until she asked. This is a legendary story, but it is not difficult to see that it is a common practice for women to decorate their faces during the day. The legend about "Xie Hong" is that during the Three Kingdoms period, Emperor Cao Pi of Wei (187-226) had a maid named Xue Yelai, and Wendi liked her very much. One night, Wendi was reading a book under the lamp. When I came to wait on Hou at night, I accidentally bumped into the crystal screen, and suddenly my temples were bleeding. After recovery, there is still a red scar on her face, but Deng Wendi still loves her. Therefore, the maid-in-waiting Bai Juyi took this as a fashion and painted a symmetrical red scar on her face with rouge. At first, it was called "Xiao Xia makeup", which looked like red light in the morning. Later, it was mostly called "oblique red"

As for eyebrows, it is recorded in The Record of Sui Dynasty in Song Dynasty (titled Tang Yan Shi Gu) that Yang Di cruised Jiangdu (ancient Yangzhou), accompanied by Lapras-shaped and wind-shaped cruise ships, with hundreds of beautiful women paddling each. One of them was a woman named Wu Jiangxian, who caught Yang Di's attention because of her long eyebrows.

Just when Tang Nv thought there was no place to put patterns on his face, the wind of makeup on his face suddenly changed. It is mentioned in "New Tang Book Five Elements" that after the middle Tang Dynasty, it was popular for women to apply black ointment on their lips instead of powder. The poet Bai Juyi also wrote in the poem "Contemporary Makeup": "Contemporary animal husbandry and contemporary makeup come from cities and spread everywhere. Fashion has no distance, and there is no powder on the cheeks. The lips are black as mud, and the eyebrows are painted low. I lost my original state in black and white, and my makeup is almost sad. " This kind of makeup, called "cry makeup" or "tear makeup", is particularly pleasing with a ponytail, a hunched waist and a decadent smile, so it has been popular for a while.

Compared with fancy skirts, the whole set of men's wear has a different feeling. Typical men's clothing in Tang Dynasty is wearing a hat, a round neck gown, a waist belt and black leather six-in-one boots. This kind of dress makes men wear smart, chic and elegant, while women wear handsome and playful clothes, washing away lead. Although Confucian classics have long stipulated that "men and women can't get clothes". The images of women dressed in men's clothes in the Tang Dynasty can be found in Zhang Xuan's "The Picture of a Lady with a Fan", "The Travels of Mrs. Guo" and the murals in Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes. It is also recorded in the Book of the Old Tang Dynasty and Notes on Ancient and Modern China that women in the Tang Dynasty wore men's clothes, including boots, robes, whips and hats, regardless of their status or whether they were at home or going out. It can be seen that the society in the Tang Dynasty was open and there were few restrictions on women.

In this way, the Tang costumes in the prosperous times exude dazzling light. Although today's people are used to calling the double-breasted coat, which represents China's traditional dress, "Tang suit", this is just a statement of pride in the Tang Dynasty. In fact, the modern Tang suit is far from dazzling, changeable and full of life. At that time, the momentum of "bowing to the crown of pearls with the coat of many countries" was so grand that China in the Tang Dynasty was the real "kingdom of clothes".