Southern Song Fashion (Magazine Article)

  This is an article from a magazine from the Song Dynasty called "Song Fashion Weekly"


In this article of Song Fashion Weekly, we are going to reflect on all of the fashions and styles of our dynasty. Most fashionable women wear delicate robes, blouses, and capes made of silk, (from silkworms of course.) Since women never cut their hair, (unless a close friend or relative dies,) they can style it into many interesting shapes. Most women wear their long black hair in buns. Some hairstyles are a foot high! If you are looking for nice accessory for your hair, try hairpins! They can be made of ivory, gold, or silver. (Some popular shapes are birds, flowers, butterflies, and phoenixes.) Pink balsam leaves can be crushed to make nail polish. (Pale faces are a status symbol, they show that a woman never has to work in the sun, like a peasant.) To make pale faces paler, add a light powder to the face and tint cheeks red with rouge to the cheeks. Lastly, remove the eyebrows and then redraw them with a pencil-thin, black line, giving that "doll-like" appearence everyone wants!

Men have styles, too. To show how little acquainted they are with manual labor, Literati let their pinky nails grow very long, and they use highly decorated "nail guards" to protect the long nails. Low ranking officials wear "feet." "Feet" are long strips of cloth that hang from a hat that officials and emperors wear. Low ranking officials wear their "feet" hanging down and curved inward with wire, while high ranking officials wore their "feet" straight down. Only the emperor wears his "feet" straight out, parallel to the ground.