Garrett, Valery M. - Chinese Clothing and Traditional Chinese Clothing in Hong Kong and South China
This is a post on two books, Chinese Clothing: An Illustrated Guide and Traditional Chinese Clothing in Hong Kong and South China, 1840-1980. Given the publication dates, I suspect Garrett took the content in the latter book and used it to write the former, as the last few chapters are nearly identical, with some additional content. I think the first half of the first book is from her Mandarin Squares.
The book basically gives an overview of Chinese clothing from late Ming to modern China (roughly 1500s-1900s), with most of the focus on the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). I would have liked more on pre-Qing China, but given the difficulty of preserving cloth and clothing, I'm not particularly surprised about the lack of information.
There's also a great deal of focus on royal robes and the robes of the mandarins (the literati, much like Korean yangban), probably because that was considered more important and therefore written about more. There's a little about the middle and lower classes, but I suspect a lot of the information is from proclamations as to what they were forbidden to wear. The last chapter or so focuses on minority groups in China (aka, non-Han-Chinese like the Hui or Mongolians). I wish there were more and that there were more detail on the time periods of the clothing; otherwise, it feels like they are frozen in some unchanging past.
I roughly knew several things about the Manchu dress, but liked having more detail, and I found the bits about the clothing of the literati particularly interesting, given that they had specific badges with specific animal symbols proclaiming rank (Korea had this as well).
Also, I am grumpy that some jerk cut pictures out of the library copy I had! Jerk!
Recommended if you want to know more about clothes, though I wish there were way more pictures, like the really awesome Traditional Korean Costume.
The book basically gives an overview of Chinese clothing from late Ming to modern China (roughly 1500s-1900s), with most of the focus on the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). I would have liked more on pre-Qing China, but given the difficulty of preserving cloth and clothing, I'm not particularly surprised about the lack of information.
There's also a great deal of focus on royal robes and the robes of the mandarins (the literati, much like Korean yangban), probably because that was considered more important and therefore written about more. There's a little about the middle and lower classes, but I suspect a lot of the information is from proclamations as to what they were forbidden to wear. The last chapter or so focuses on minority groups in China (aka, non-Han-Chinese like the Hui or Mongolians). I wish there were more and that there were more detail on the time periods of the clothing; otherwise, it feels like they are frozen in some unchanging past.
I roughly knew several things about the Manchu dress, but liked having more detail, and I found the bits about the clothing of the literati particularly interesting, given that they had specific badges with specific animal symbols proclaiming rank (Korea had this as well).
Also, I am grumpy that some jerk cut pictures out of the library copy I had! Jerk!
Recommended if you want to know more about clothes, though I wish there were way more pictures, like the really awesome Traditional Korean Costume.