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Thanks for the love on the last post, I’ve been motivated to continue writing LOL Anyway: Construction/sewing pattern/structure is very important to hanfu!
There are a few important structure conventions when it comes to hanfu—almost all traditional-cut hanfu follow these rules; you could call them the defining characteristics of hanfu. There are exceptions to every rule of course (I will go over some caveats at the end of this post), but generally if a hanfu design ignores these rules we might consider it to be ‘incorrect.'
(There will be a longer follow-up pt. 3 post to this explaining the anatomy of a hanfu top/robe, where there will be more detailed in-context illustrations and descriptions. I just figured I should list these ‘rules’ somewhere separately.)
Take a look at your shirts. Is there a shoulder seam between the front of the shirt and the back of the shirt? Western clothing tends to consist of a front piece + back piece sewn together to create a space for your body to sit in:
Hanfu doesn’t work like that. Traditionally, the garment isn’t separated into a front piece and back piece: it’s separated into a right piece and left piece, which are joined together at the vertical center seam. Why? Traditional fabric has a narrower width than the standard ~145cm that we have today, so a long, narrow piece is less wasteful to cut out from a bolt of silk than a wide one.
Therefore there is always a center seam, one running vertically down the front and one down the back. 中 = center, 縫 = seam, so 中縫 means center seam. There’ll be a front center seam (前中縫) and a back center seam (後中縫).
Kind of an addendum onto the previous point? Additionally since the body pieces are separated into left/right rather front/back, there’s no seam at the top of the shoulder here. The fabric is simply draped over the arm/shoulder to hang down, covering the torso on both sides.*
*Caveat: Some modified hanfu that vendors sell today will have a shoulder seam, especially thicker winter garments or short-sleeved garments. This is a design choice made to prevent the fabric from looking too stiff, known as 破肩/破肩/po4 jian1,literally “broken shoulder.” It can look great, lots of hanfu makers do it! But just to be clear, that is a MODIFICATION.
Western clothing patterns tend to have something where the fabric of the sleeve gets connected to the fabric of the garment’s body at the shoulder/armpit, often with a concave arm hole shape to help with the contours of the garment when it’s worn.
Hanfu sleeves, on the other hand, are never connected at the armpit—they are connected halfway down the arm. In other words, the piece of fabric that forms the body extends to also cover the upper arm part of the sleeve. The actual sleeve piece is connected to the body at the bicep/elbow area via a flat seam. (In the case of half- or no- sleeve garments there might just not be a separate sleeve piece.)
Applies to cross-collar, some varieties of round collar, and some varieties of standing collar tops. In the case that the front of the garment crosses over itself, the flap coming from the wearer’s left goes OVER the flap coming from the wearer’s right. Easiest way to make sense of this is, if you’re looking at someone wearing a cross-collar hanfu top, the cross will look like a lowercase y.
NO RULE EXISTS WITHOUT EXCEPTION!!! These rules exist because a majority of hanfu follow them and they are a standard that people agree on right now. However, there are ALWAYS cases—historically or otherwise—where these rules may be broken. For example, there are several Ming Dynasty cross collar robes that happen to be left over right, and the location of the sleeve seam can differ based on what garment you're looking at.
Also, many modern hanfu manufacturers will deliberately choose to break these 'rules' in favor of aesthetics. This is a purposeful design choice—not one that's done out of ignorance or disrespect. It's easy for common modifications to get mistaken for 'historically accurate.' To be clear, it is 100% okay and super common for modifications to exist! Just don't go around claiming that it was historically that way.
My advice is that if you're starting out with hanfu, try to stick to these rules in the back of your head as closely as possible. Once you've built your foundational knowledge, then you can start exploring the exceptions to the rules. These rules may not be foolproof, but they are a useful tool to help you understand the commonalities and trends within hanfu without overwhelming you.
Last note: it is generally more of a taboo for seams that should exist to not exist in a piece of clothing (i.e. no center back seam) than for extra seams to exist. If you go look in museums for the artifacts that hanfu is based off of, you'll notice that a lot of them—especially the ones from earlier dynasties—are a chaotic patchwork of a bunch of random piece of fabric sewn together to create the garment. Fabric is expensive, people don't want to waste it! So it's not all that weird to have seams in random places.
Happy 除夕 everyone! 有蛇有得 :>
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I get why fantasy authors would default to using, like, the same basic arrangement of seasons and weather and gravity that we have here in The Real World because they have to make up so much shit as it is and it IS probably good praxis to give your readers some familiar touchstones in your world so they can just focus on the plot, but. having said that. I think there should be more settings that have seventeen seasons, all of them different lengths, and constellations that don't have fixed patterns because sometimes they'll get pissy and just move to a different part of the sky, and sometimes the sun tells people things telepathically, and there's a type of weather where the air just gets really thick and difficult to walk through that's unpleasant but not any more uncommon than rain. it's called smärklf.
why are yt to mp3 websites always the shadiest fuckin sites I feel like I’m going down a dark alleyway risking the chance of getting drugged and/or stabbed just bc its the only place where I can find a guy to deal me some decent fart with extra reverb dot mp3s
long-distance mech pilots don’t need to worry quite so much about traveling light. when you’re walking around in several tons of metal, especially one built to wander, you aren’t quite to the point of needing to choose which of two keepsakes you have room in your bag for— there’s plenty of space for both.
Things are different for interstellar knights.
You see, whether wandering alone or setting off on some quest for their lord, a knight’s only home is their armor. Anything they bring with them, they must carry within that armor, even through battles— and as such, every gram and every cubic centimeter can make the difference between life and death, and every calorie chosen to replace a keepsake can make the difference between survival and starvation. As such, a knight’s inventory is heavily optimized— and so is their armor itself. What matters more, the heating system or the EVA boosters? The extra fuel storage or the emergency release mechanisms? Pick one, and you’ll have no room for the other unless you can cut corners somewhere else. Every single element of a knight’s armor is there because they made the conscious decision to put it there. Every weapon they’ve attached to their shell had to replace some traditional aspect of a life support system. Every inch of their shells are packed full of every system that can fit until it’s tight against the pilot’s skin to leave them bruised whenever they exit their shell.
it doesn’t take long for them to realize which superfluous components are the weakest link.
They start small, at first— often as simple as a haircut to help a tighter helmet fit better. Some try to lose weight, but quickly regret it when they find themselves near starvation on some distant moon. The ones that survive past their first year are the ones that are willing to take things a bit further— the toes on both feet, to make room for a slight jump booster. One of their ribs, perhaps— replaced with a battery that connects to the armor through a cable that winds around bones and muscles. It’s only a matter of time before they do something about those bones and muscles too.
those who have only heard the stories will say that a knight’s armor is their home. Those who have met one, seen them exit their armor and seen just how little is left of the body inside— they will say that a knight’s armor is a part of their body. Integrated into them until they cannot survive without it. Both are wrong. Even some knights cannot pin down the true answer— what they really feel as they connect their armor to the components of it that they have placed inside of them. The best ones do, though. They know it well.
A knight’s armor is not a part of their body. Their body is a part of their armor— their home, to be renovated and optimized as they see fit. To be replaced, improved, amputated and eviscerated so that it can be remade into the glorious works of art that the heroes of the galaxy become as they charge into battle and become a story worth remembering.
As the armor learns to reach into your veins, pulling oxygen from the carbon dioxide you exhale and weaving it back into your blood, the space once taken up by inefficient organic lungs becomes the home of the heating system, warming you from within no matter what part of the void between stars you find yourself in. As it recycles amino acids into proteins again and infuses them back into what tissues remain, you’re free to remove your old digestive organs and find a home for your armor’s main computer, kept safe at the center of your shell. Many knights choose to put their own organic brain down there next to it, incidentally making room for more optical systems in their skulls.
Your armor is no longer simply “a part of you” and you are no longer simply “a part of it.” It is you. You are it. Your bones, its power cells, your organs its systems. You are its brain and its CPU in equal measure and its beautiful exterior plates, painted with the symbols of the lord you serve or simply the cause you stand for, will inspire others to take up arms themselves and let themselves become part of it.
your body, your home, your masterpiece
guys listen
mermaids would have to be dark-skinned and chubby to survive in the ocean
water isnt a great means of protecting oneself from the sun theyd have to be very dark if they were shallow mermaids and they didnt want to be constantly sunburnt and they may be paler if they lived deeper in the water but theyd have to be buff and/or chubby as hell to resist the water pressure and cold of the deep sea
what im saying is pale-ass white skinny mermaids are just unrealistic
For any writers: http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/SFTerms.html
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Meaning the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Sui dynasty, or the Tang dynasty (~400-900 CE). These few hundred years were when aesthetic styles in China were at their boldest.
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