Making a Historical Chinese (Tang Dynasty) Dress! | Qixiong Ruqun (齊胸襦裙)

my name is rachel and in this video i am going to be making a hanfu most famously associated with the tang dynasty. now if you have never heard of hanfu before and you're watching this video don't worry i will attempt to explain. so hanfu is just a word that means any clothing from any dynasty empire time period in which the ruling class was the han people, the han ethnicity. so for example the manchu ruled qing dynasty and the mongol ruled yuan dynasty, the clothes from those time periods would not be labeled as hanfu. they are not the clothing of the han people. as you can probably tell the han in hanfu comes from the han people. the fu in hanfu comes from the mandarin word yifu which means clothing. the type of hanfu that i will be making is called the qishong ruchun which basically means qishong is above the breast, high-waisted, and ruchun is the type of paneled and pleated skirt that is very common in han ruled dynastic clothing. you see a bunch in different lengths. this is probably the highest that it gets above the breast but many ruchun sit at the natural waist. so i'm going to show you the fabrics that i bought because i went shopping today. so when i was brainstorming this project i wanted my color scheme to be green, yellow, and a sort of autumn muted orange red color. you know the color. i'll show you. so this is the yellow that i have. it's going to be for the undershirt and sleeves. it's so pretty. by the way i do not have a pattern for this. i'm just going off hope dreams vibes and various sewing blogs that people have so kindly posted of their own journeys making qishong ruchun and i will be posting and linking all of those blogs. now i originally planned for the ruchun of this outfit to be green but then i came across this beautiful fabric. now in the camera it's looking a bit more red than it looks in real life. it's actually much more of a dusty orange sort of a color. i think fall colors. that's what this feels like to me. so this i don't know why i'm putting it over my arm. this would be for the ruchun like this and all the way down. so with the yellow be a bit like that. now if you're familiar with hanfu at all you might be thinking this is not nearly flowy enough looking and you'd be right. in my extensive research looking on taobao the majority of these dresses are very flowy and graceful like a fairy using materials like organza and chiffon. so i bought this material to overlay on top of the fabric that i got because as you can see this is very see-through. so this would go on top of this fabric so that i won't be you know showing my goods to the whole world. and last but not least because i still wanted to incorporate green in this project. i need to remember the name of this word. i forgot the name of the band. i'm gonna look it up so i don't look ignorant on the internet. the internet isn't giving me a clear answer. so since i still wanted to incorporate green in this project i bought this green ribbon to add as the top border of my ruchun. so i thought that these two still would make a cute color combo together. and i bought this other ribbon to layer on top of it. these are poppies if you can see them well enough. and i bought these white fabric flowers also to hand sew them onto the ribbon. i also got these other ones which i thought perfectly matched my color scheme. i'm going to sew onto the green ribbon some more. and yeah that's my supplies so far. i'm very excited to start making it and i hope that you enjoy this journey along with me. hello everyone today is going to be the first day of working on this project. i actually started today off with going on a really lovely nature walk. something in between an actual hike and a walk in the park. it's a really nice area in the city that i'm in and i quite enjoyed it. i've been really wanting to go on walks as soon as daylight savings times kicked in again because more daylight. but i finally gave myself that kick in the butt that i needed to go out and enjoy nature and get some exercise in. but it was also, i'm not gonna lie, a little bit of procrastination as was putting on my makeup and doing my hair and picking out my outfit because i love sewing but anyone who has sewing as their hobby also hates sewing. i'm just kidding i can't actually speak for everyone but yeah. as rachel maxey once said, 95% of sewing straight up sucks. straight up sucks and then you get to the end of a project and you love it and then you do it all over again and rinse and repeat rinse and repeat and boom now you have sewing as a hobby. i think i have an idea of how i want to construct this. the first thing i think i want to make is the yellow undershirt. i have previously made a vest that i think i can use as a base for the shape that i want. that's part of what's making me so nervous about this project is that i am winging it and i'm not the best at drafting patterns. i kind of just go for it as i do in all things and i don't have a dress form either so flying by the seat of my pants let's do this thing. so i have gone ahead and drawn my pattern for the sleeve. now in looking into this dress i've noticed a couple different sleeve variations. some actually quite tight around the wrist. well not tight necessarily but not super long and flowing is what i mean. and then i've seen some that have been quite dramatic with almost a hanging flag shape at the end that then grow tighter at the base of the arm near the armpit. i've decided to do a shape that is somewhat in between the two lengths. not quite the full hanging flag shape but not quite so close to the wrist. and so the shape that i'm going for is generally like this. i don't know if you can see the... yeah you cannot see what i drew because i drew it in pencil but it's about this long going this way and then all the way up and the top of the sleeve i'm going to be using this sleeve pattern to help me make sure that it'll actually fit correctly on my arm. the shirt's done! yay! after a brief interlude in which i was locked out of my house for about three hours i was able to come back inside, sew the sleeves onto the shirt, and add this ribbon so i can make sure that the shirt stays in place. i'm gonna go grab one of my dresses so i can see what it looks like underneath something. it's really cute right? okay i'm excited. i'm excited. i'm still very intimidated by making the rest of the outfit but it's nice to have the first part done. okay. hello there! it is day two of our project but it is not actually the day after the last time i shot. it's been about a week since i finished sewing the yellow undershirt. because every day this week i pretty much got home from work, lied face down on the couch, and went and turns out lack of sweep and overworking yourself can actually cause your body to deteriorate and shut down. so i spent most of yesterday being extremely sick and not doing anything at all. i'm still not doing really great today but it is definitely a huge improvement from yesterday. so i put on some makeup, washed my hair, which is why it looks like this right now. it's still a little bit wet, and i put on a cute little outfit for sewing today. so there's two different variations that i've been seeing when i've been doing my research looking into this dress. one is just your basic tube shape, having ladies looking basically like a palace column. and then i've also seen shapes that actually go out a little bit from the bust. so more of a triangle shape rather than a straight up and down tube. i think i'm gonna go more for that second shape. i can just use- voice crack. lovely. this is what being sick sounds like. anyway, i have a skirt panel from a different sewing pattern that i'm sure i can use. i have two layers for the skirt as i showed in the beginning. just a normal base satiny layer with a flowy organic to go on top. i really don't want this hanfu to be too plain looking. after all the work i'm putting into this, i want to look like a fancy bitch, okay? i don't want it to look too plain. anyway, okay, enough procrastinating. let's get to filming this shit. okay, so this is like the general vibe that i think i want to go for for the top of the skirt. here in the middle will be where the ribbon ties go that make the dress stay together. okay, counting my chickens before they hatch, but y'all look at it. okay, i'm really excited about this. oh, the pleats look good. i wasn't expecting them to look good. should i add pockets? i feel like that might potentially be a bad idea, but i love a good pocket. hi, so please ignore the fact that you can very much see my tripod in this shot. so what basically happened is i had to do some hand sewing. i had to take my little flower appliques that i had bought and sew them onto the top of my dress, but i have been feeling kind of not great recently, you know, physically, mentally, and i really dislike hand sewing in general. so i just didn't want to film so i didn't. so just know that i did hand sew a bunch of these flowers onto the top of my hanbok, so you will see those in the reveal and i'll talk about it blah blah blah. i know some people find hand sewing relaxing and there certainly is a satisfaction in the mindless and repetitive nature of it all, which i can lose myself in sometimes, but it's not the sort of thing that i think, you know what, i want to do some hand sewing today. doesn't really occur to me. so instead i'm filming myself using gorilla glue to put some of my leftover flower appliques onto some brits that i'm going to put in my hair, which i think will be really cute, and to tie the tie the whole look in together. and after this i am going to begin putting on my makeup and then do my hair. hello friends! okay that is super zoomed in. now begins the hair and makeup portion of this video. now i am not going to claim to be good at makeup, shall we say simply. you know, i dabble, i enjoy eyeliner, but i don't often do base makeup and i certainly have never drawn a hwadian before, so we're gonna be into some new territory today. i also do not have that coveted coveted skill of being able to speak concisely or properly, well in general, but also specifically while i'm trying to do my makeup or hair. so there's probably just going to be parts where i do voiceover or overlay something else, possibly a mochi hanfu video or voiceover used with permission. go subscribe to her and follow her on tiktok. ooh sexy. not that i can see because i have like the worst eyesight. i need to get contacts. okay. lovely. now that that's on, let's try to do some makeup. i have a reference of the specific hwadian that i am going to try my best to replicate. this is what i'm thinking because i think it's interesting enough and it's pretty. i like it. i like it. good vibes. but also i think there's a chance that i might be able to do it, so we're gonna do that. and i find it really awkward just to sit and do my makeup without listening to music or anything, so i'm going to put on my headphones over my wig cap and listen to a video essay on our flag means death. did i mention that i never wear foundation? forgive me father for i have sinned. oh that looks ferociously terrible. i don't know if you can tell on this camera but it does look just incredibly incredibly bad. i put i put winnie the pooh stickers on this. um something you should know about me is one of my small pleasures that just means the world to me is putting stickers on everything. like look what i did. yes. just makes me inordinately happy. just always on the search for new stickers for my palettes. now this one gets a pass because it already it already has him on it. trust the process. okay ladies let's do this thing. why does it kind of look like the starfleet symbol? oh it's not in the center. oh why can't i do this right? this is the center. this is where i drew it. i've already started. i've already started. oh my god i did it right in my dimples. i wish this was centered but that's life. that's what all the people say. you're riding high in april shot down in may but i know i changed my tune when i'm back on top back on top in june. very art. pretty. i really enjoy this artist so i'll post her instagram in the bottom of the video. now i'm not shaving my eyebrows for this so you're just gonna have to deal with my modern eyebrow shape i suppose. hey it's mochi and today i wanted to share with you a special type of historical makeup called huadian. and of course there's a legend about how this became popular in ancient china. a long long time ago during the northern and southern dynasties there was a beautiful princess called shouyang. she loved plum blossoms and was admiring them in the palace gardens. the princess got tired so she laid down in the garden and fell asleep. as the princess closed her eyes a plum flower fell onto her forehead. when she finally woke up it left a mark that looked like a flower. no matter how hard she tried to wash it off it wouldn't come off until three days later. by then all the ladies in the palace were jealous of her beauty so they tried to copy it. and thus huadian makeup became a trend. with the course of many centuries and many dynasties ladies would get creative with the designs. they would draw them in shapes of animals, stars, the moon, water droplets, coins, and of course flowers. they would even use butterfly or dragonfly wings and paste them onto their foreheads. although the trend has been lost for many years i still believe it can come back. so the next time you do your makeup try adding a huadian like princess shouyang. like i said this is about as high as a zhu chun ever got in in han chinese clothing. but if you are at all familiar with the korean hanbok you probably noticed that the skirt similarly also comes above the breast except the shirt goes on top instead of underneath. that's because the tang dynasty was the height of any chinese dynasty's cultural and foreign influence basically. this was a time period in which there were ambassadors to japan, to korea, to all the neighboring kingdoms. you see widespread tang chinese cultural artifacts being transported during this time. this is the time period in which japan first adopted the chinese writing system. so like um i forgot what the names of the books were that that what are those japanese myth books okay google it's like the it starts with a k i swear okay the internet is telling me the tale of genji but that is not what i'm talking about i'm not on the heian period. i am not getting up and going to get my japanese history notebook that's stupid i'm not the is it the kojiki aha i remembered it okay i remembered it y'all saw that the kojiki according to wikipedia is an early japanese chronicle of myths legends hymns genealogies oral traditions and semi-historical accounts concerning the origin of the japanese archipelago the kami and traditions of the japanese imperial line anyway these are the books that i was talking about and these books are written examples of some of the first use of the chinese written language in japanese there we go that's what i was trying to do anyway the whole point of all of that was that this is the same time period as this dress which is why i wanted to mention it for any of you kids out there who were way obsessed with percy jackson as a kid and therefore became mediterranean history nerds this is also concurrent with the early rise of the byzantine empire