collar’s ceremonial role partly derived from its material presence, its ability to structure the shoulders, modifying the body shape to create width and presence, and offering a clear, auspiciously framed canvas to “carry” motifs of good fortune. Like other components of ritual dress—detachable neck pendants, overskirt lappet aprons, and belt hangings—the cloud collar created movement and presence that demarcated the ceremonial space in which the bride was transferred to her new home and family. The cloud collar was often trimmed with silver pieces, bells, and tassels, additions which ceremonialized the procession and drew attention to the bride. In Henan, for example, brides wore cloud collars with hanging ribbons and bells, their tinkling walk accentuating their movements.72
Equally, less prosaic points also favored the cloud collar. Its practical function in protecting the clothing from hair-oil was early noted by taste arbiter Li Yu (1611–1679): “Cloud collars are used to cover the clothes, to avoid dirt and oil, and made into the most beautiful shapes.”73 Many women could only afford one or two items of formal clothing for celebratory occasions, and protecting them from dirt was challenging— embroidered silks were not easy to wash.74 Cloud collars not only adorned, they also protected from and covered up stains, an association explicit enough in the early nineteenth century for Lin Sumen (ca. 1748–1809) to name the cloud collar “hair-oil collar” (you jian).75 They could also facilitate the rejuvenation of dated outfits and, like the growth of secondhand clothes shops, hire-shops, and pawnshops, should be understood as responding to the challenge of securing new clothes for New Year celebrations or other formal events.76
Both ceremonial associations and practical functions may have contributed to the appearance of a style central to nineteenth-century fashions: ao or shan jackets with appliqué cloud collar and coordinated bottom and overlapping front borders, as seen in the nineteenth-century Yangliuqing prints. The attachment of the cloud collar to the jacket had been anticipated by Li Yu, who advised coordinating the cloud collar’s coloring with the main jacket, so as to prevent the lining from being exposed through the cloud collar’s movements. After further thought he found this still unsatisfactory: “If the collar moves and the color is the same, it is still not as good as the collar not moving at all.” His solution to the problem was prescient: “The [cloud collar] is suitable for wearing at home, but if you go out visiting, then you must subtly afix [the collar] with threads, so as to avoid it coming apart from the clothing.”77
Ethnicity and Embellishment in Nineteenth-Century Fashions
These cloud collar embellished and bordered jacket styles, worn with similarly adorned skirts and trousers, defined the look of the late Qing. Taohuawu and Yangliuqing print shops filled the markets with these fashionable beauties, shown in their boudoir or garden accompanied by a younger maid or female relative, and rollicking sons. The rise of these beauties in popular prints occurred against shifts in the defining characteristics of gentlewoman and courtesan. The archetypical late Ming–early Qing courtesan was a talented beauty renowned for music, performance, and poetry. As companions to gentlemen in a society where men and women, even within the same kin unit, were not expected to intermingle, their presence effectively removed the function of education or culture on the part of the gentlewoman’s wife. But Manchu attempts to regulate entertainment quarters in cities like Nanjing or Yangzhou accompanied commercialization of the industry to make the late Qing courtesan figure a hollowed-out version of her late Ming rendition.78 This coincided with a growing acceptability, at least among affluent families, that daughters should receive a full and rich education, and an assertion by gentlewomen (guixiu) that their identities as wives and mothers should be defined not just by their gentry status, but also by their own cultural achievements.79
The gentlewoman’s newly articulated claims of culture and literacy was accompanied by a shift in the representation of beauties, now surrounded by symbols of literary attainment—brushes, scrolls, books. In addition to the continued production of overtly erotic renditions aimed primarily at a male viewer, another genre of woman’s portraits that “present women more as subjects in their own right” suggests women’s increasing involvement in purchasing and commissioning vernacular painting.80 Popular prints also support this argument. Whereas earlier depictions of beauties were dominated by courtesan figures sporting flirtatious poses that highlighted sexualizing motifs, late Qing popular prints portray women as validated by symbols of literary attainment, rather than erotic implications. In a print like figure 1.9, it is symbols of literacy and education—brushes, books, scrolls, painting—in addition to the male child that award the female sitter cultural heft. These women assert a newly defined social function—their education justified by their roles as teachers to their sons, and as such, responsible for family fortunes. But in turn, their fashionable clothing, featuring details such as the embroidered border or the cloud collar, came to reference the social status of being a cultured and educated lady.
FIGURE 1.9. The elegantly dressed mother and her son hold the viewer’s eye as they gaze out calmly, surrounded by emblems of literacy—ink, brush, paper, books. Educating Sons in the Women’s Quarters (Guifang jiaozi), mid-late Qing. Yishengcheng printshop, 90 x 54 cm. Xinjian County Museum, reprinted from Feng Jicai, Zhongghuo muban nianhua jicheng, Jiangzhou juan, 205, with permission from the Zhonghua Book Company.
The print workshop’s circulation of this ideal had wide influence. Both Yangliuqing and Taohuawu prints were highly commercialized endeavors, with printshops establishing branches to consolidate market share and reach. Yangliuqing, whose location on the Grand Canal meant it could access paper and dyes from Suzhou, had more than seventeen shops during the mid-late Qing period, and the most well-known shops opened branches beyond Yangliuqing, disseminating not just the artistic style and content of their prints but also fashionable styles.81 For example, when the Wan Chang print shop established a branch in Weixian, Shandong Province, print designers and print carvers were sent to help; even the prints themselves were sent along. Thus, the Yangliuqing print aesthetic infiltrated Weixian’s local print tradition (Yangjiabu).82 In Yangliuqing, most families worked in this trade, either full-time or part-time, and women’s labor was particularly important. Each year, during the spring quiet, or after the autumn harvest had been gathered, the print shops would distribute work to women in the surrounding forty-six villages. Their labor was most critical during the final stage, when color was added (some was printed, but much applied by hand): women had a reputation for talent in tinting facial features and dress details.83
With the expansion of Yangliuqing’s commercial reach, its style eventually reached the court. Successful print shops like Qi Jianlong opened a branch in Beijing’s Qianmen Gate neighborhood, and Yangliuqing print artists traveled to the capital, to work in locations such as Langfang Toutiao and Longfu Temple Street, and perhaps even at court.84 In providing a point of connection between imperial and vernacular styles, artists infused Yangliuqing prints with influence from imperial workshops, while at the same time this vernacular art form impacted imperial art, something evident from the nineteenth-century Manchu court’s “enjoying pleasures” portraits.
These informal dress portraits (bian fu xiang) were the counterparts of the official court dress portraits (chao fu xiang), and like today’s carefully curated magazine-spreads of celebrities at home, dress was a key way in which the desired construct of informal domesticity was communicated.85 Thus, in several examples from the Daoguang and Xianfeng periods (1859–61), the imperial consorts wear informal robes as standard. One example, Autumn’s Overflowing Happiness Courtyard (Xiyi qiuting tu), shows the Daoguang emperor sitting together with his third wife, Empress Xiaoquancheng (1808–1840), along with consorts and children on an autumn day in the Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yuanmingyuan; also known as the Old Summer Palace). The women all wear chenyi robes, which by that point was the established informal robe for Manchu women (
