Late Tang Dynasty Lady: 晚唐女士

August 22, 2019

Late Tang Dynasty Lady: 晚唐女士

Gorgeous cosplay by Niki 镜子. You can find her cosplay blog here.

The fashion of the Tang women became inversely more revealing and ostentatious as the dynasty marched toward its decline. As evidenced by the donor mural portraits from Dunhuang and the paintings from late Tang, Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, and early Song, women- especially noblewomen began to wear an extensive amount of hairpins. Their silk robes became more loosened and ornately decorated.

Music: Birdsong in the Hollow Valley

The Tang dynasty experience a protracted decline that lasted over a century. The middle of the dynasty was marked by catastrophe in the form of the An Lushan Rebellion where millions died in famine and war. The ensuing century was marked by a series of external invasions and slow deterioration of the internal bureaucracy. As the Tang took more blows from rival neighbors, its interior slowly carved up by ambitious hereditary military governors called the Jiedushi 节度使.

A House of Cards: Preludes to total warlordom: The 48 Fanzhen (Military Districts under Buffer Towns) of late Tang dynasty, as of the 15th year of Emperor Xianzong's reign (820 AD).

Imperial power- especially in the wake of a procession of weak Emperors eventually allowed the central power to be devolved into the hands of these hereditary warlords. Through legal wranglings, the Jiedushi took the empire's provinces for themselves and locked them down as their private domains. In the end, the Tang would retrace the fall of the Han dynasty- and has its collapse followed by nearly half a century of war for supremacy between these ambitious warlords.

DRESS OF A COURT ATTENDANT

Cosplay by: 装束复原

A less ostentatious form of late Tang lady's fashion. A late Tang dynasty palace musician. Usually, palace servants and court attendants would be dressed in this manner. She wears the typical elaborate hairpins of this era while donning a paint dyed dress 彩绘绮衫 , dyed- ribbons 缬染纱帔子, and silk dress 纱长裙.