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Dressing for the Times: Fashion in Tang Dynasty China (618-907)

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Dressing for the Times: Fashion in Tang Dynasty China (618-907) BuYun Chen Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 © 2013 BuYun Chen All rights reserved ABSTRACT Dressing for the Times: Fashion in Tang Dynasty China (618-907) BuYun Chen During the Tang dynasty, an increased capacity for change created a new value system predicated on the accumulation of wealth and the obsolescence of things that is best understood as fashion. Increased wealth among Tang elites was paralleled by a greater investment in clothes, which imbued clothes with new meaning. Intellectuals, who viewed heightened commercial activity and social mobility as symptomatic of an unstable society, found such profound changes in the vestimentary landscape unsettling. For them, a range of troubling developments, including crisis in the central government, deep suspicion of the newly empowered military and professional class, and anxiety about waste and obsolescence were all subsumed under the trope of fashionable dressing. The clamor of these intellectuals about the widespread desire to be “current” reveals the significant space fashion inhabited in the empire – a space that was repeatedly gendered female. This dissertation considers fashion as a system of social practices that is governed by material relations – a system that is also embroiled in the politics of the gendered self and the body. I demonstrate that this notion of fashion is the best way to understand the process through which competition for status and self-identification among elites gradually broke away from the imperial court and its system of official ranks. Out of status instability grew a desire for novelty that transformed the dressed body into an object for status display during the late eighth and ninth centuries. Sartorial savvy became a critical arena for the articulation of wealth and power by the old aristocracy and new military or professional elite alike. A foundational aim of my dissertation is to understand how fashion contributed to a new system for ordering the world in Tang dynasty China. By the ninth century, changes in the Tang economic and political structure enabled the rise of a new fashionable elite whose politics of appearance were driven more by the luxury silk economy than by the old symbolic order. I argue that the emergence of fashion was intimately related to developments in the silk industry, which not only reached record production levels during this period, but also manufactured fabrics that were unprecedented in design and complexity. The rise of private silk workshops in the latter half of the dynasty made silk more available to the new military and professional elites. As consumers of novel silks, these elites propelled the silk industry forward and with it, fashion. The new silk economy was personified in a popular literary trope of the ninth century: the impoverished weaving girl slaving away in the silk workshops as an icon of the damages engendered by the excessive consumption of luxury. With this project, I illustrate how the history of Tang fashion serves as an important prism into the workings of the Tang state, the productive lives of premodern women, and the formation of social and cultural identities during a dynamic period of world history. My approach is interdisciplinary, informed by economic history, art history, literature, and textile technology. To my analysis of Tang poetry, sumptuary laws, and economic treatises, I add careful examination of the visual representations of dress and a close study of the corpus of silk artifacts to map the transformations in sartorial practice. By the end of the dynasty, fashion had become a key part of a larger critique of the waning empire’s economic landscape, the rise of a new military and professional elite, and the collapse of stable status displays. Involved in a nascent market system, tied to the building of new hierarchies, and implicated in structures of gender and cultural identity, the Tang fashion system was integral to these larger historical processes. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. ii List of Maps and Illustrations ........................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION. Keeping up with the Tang ......................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE. The Language of Fashion ......................................................................................35 CHAPTER TWO. Fashioning the Body: Toward a History of Appearances .....................................76 CHAPTER THREE. The Story of Silk: Innovations in Silk Production and Technology ................123 CHAPTER FOUR. Anxieties of Excess: Fashion and Sumptuary Legislation ................................164 EPILOGUE. Fashion: The New Before the Modern .......................................................................211 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................................215 APPENDIX. Textile Basics: A Brief History of Silk Weaving in Pre-Tang China ........................234 i LIST OF TABLES 1 Distribution of Silk Producing Areas .................................................................... page 127 2 Workshops of the Office of Weaving and Dyeing ................................................ page 130 3 Distribution of tax and tribute silks during the Kaiyuan period (713-741) .......... page 133 4 Distribution of tribute silks during the Yuanhe period (806-820) ....................... page 139 5 Silks produced for tribute in Zhejiang Province ................................................... page 141 ii LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 1 Two earth spirits, two guardians, and two officials, Tomb of Liu Tingxun ......... page 91 2 Seated female attendant, Wangjiafencun Tomb 90 ............................................... page 92 3 Silk tabby skirt with printed floral design, Astana Tomb no. 187 ........................ page 92 4 Female attendant, Tomb of Zheng Rentai ............................................................. page 94 5 Female attendant (in male attire), Tomb of Zheng Rentai .................................... page 94 6 Female attendant on horseback, Tomb of Princess Xincheng .............................. page 95 7 Female attendant, Tomb of Princess Jinxiang ...................................................... page 97 8 Groom, Tomb of Princess Jinxiang ....................................................................... page 97 9 Female attendant, Tomb of Yang Jianchen ........................................................... page 98 10 Female attendant, Tomb of Xianyutinghui ........................................................... page 98 11a Female figure, Tomb of Zhang Xiong and Lady Qu ............................................ page 99 11b Female figure (detail), Tomb of Zhang Xiong and Lady Qu .............................. page 100 12 Female attendants (mural), Tomb of Princess Xincheng .................................... page 103 13 Female attendant (mural), Tomb of Princess Fangling ....................................... page 104 14 Female attendant (mural), Tomb of Princess Fangling ....................................... page 104 15 Palace women (mural), Tomb of Prince Yide ..................................................... page 105 16 Group of palace women (mural), Tomb of Princess Yongtai ............................. page 106 17 Female attendant (mural), Tomb of Prince Zhanghuai ....................................... page 107 18 Palace women touring the garden (mural), Tomb of Prince Zhanghuai ............. page 109 19 Palace women resting in the garden (mural), Tomb of Prince Zhanghuai .......... page 110 20 Female entertainers (mural), Tomb of Prince Li Xian ........................................ page 111 21 Female attendants (mural), Tomb of Prince Li Xian .......................................... page 112 22 Detail, “Ladies Playing a Game of Go” ............................................................. page 114 23 Detail, “Ladies Playing a Game of Go” ............................................................. page 114 24 Detail, “Ladies Playing a Game of Go” ............................................................. page 114 25 “Court Ladies Adorning their Hair with Flowers” ............................................. page 116 26 Female attendant (mural), Tomb of Wei family ................................................. page 117 27 Two female attendants (mural), Tomb of Wang Chuzhi .................................... page 117 28 Yinlupu (“Guide of Souls”) ............................................................................... page 118 29 Female attendant with boy (mural), Tomb of Wang Chuzhi .............................. page 119 30 Map of Administrative Divisions ........................................................................ page 126 31 Map of Silk Road trade routes ............................................................................ page 144 32 Diagram of warp-faced compound tabby. ..........................................................
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