Song Clothing, Grooming and Personal Care: Dress in Northern and Southern Song China

Between 960 and 1279, clothing and personal care in Song China were shaped by distinctions of rank, occupation, wealth, and setting. The Northern Song court ruled from Kaifeng until the Jurchen conquest of northern China in 1127; the Southern Song then governed from Hangzhou and other southern territories. Dress ranged from official clothing governed by rank and occasion to practical garments worn for work and household life. Surviving descriptions, paintings, and excavated clothing show both formal rules and a more varied everyday practice.

Clothing was also the product of household and specialist labour. Silk production depended on raising silkworms and making cloth, while women’s domestic responsibilities included sewing garments.

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Dress, rank, and occasion

Song officials had different clothes for different duties. Sacrificial dress was worn for ancestral rites and major ceremonies; court dress was used at imperial meetings and some rituals; and officials also had a daily gown. The daily official garment was generally a long, loose-sleeved robe with a round collar. Its colour, accompanying headwear, and other accessories helped identify rank. The rules changed during the dynasty, so official colours were not fixed throughout the Song period. Senior officials permitted to wear purple or crimson could also wear a gold or silver fish-shaped bag as an ornament.

Ordinary dress was subject to rules too, but regulations did not describe everyone’s actual clothing. At one point, rules prescribed white for ordinary people; later, black was permitted for civilians, clerks, and intellectuals. In practice, garments and skirts appeared in many colours. Clothes also varied with work and means. A short, coarse-cloth jacket called a duanhe was associated with people of low socioeconomic status, while other everyday garments included jackets, gowns, skirts, and trousers.

Clothing made status visible, but it could also mark the occasion or occupation. Officials used prescribed combinations of robes, headwear, belts, and shoes. People engaged in physical work needed more practical outfits, and Song paintings depict women working in trousers as well as women wearing skirts.

Layers and everyday garments

Many women wore an upper garment with a skirt. The jacket, known as a ru, could be worn with a qun, or skirt; trousers could also be worn beneath a skirt. A wrap skirt made from two fabric panels sewn to a separate waistband was one recorded form. Outer garments added another layer, and their length and sleeve shape could vary with the wearer and the occasion.

The beizi, a loose outer coat, was a prominent Song garment worn by women and men across social groups, though it was more common among people of higher status. It had a straight shape and could have side openings. Song examples varied in length and sleeve width, and the garment was often left open at the front, allowing the clothing underneath to show. Some forms used ribbons under the arms and at the back, with a belt to bring the garment together; other versions were left unbound. Men generally wore it informally, including at home, while women could wear it as ordinary dress. A sleeveless version, made from ramie or raw silk, was also available.

The tomb of Huang Sheng, an affluent young woman buried near Fuzhou in 1243, preserved Southern Song silk garments. A patterned gauze robe has decorated borders with gilding and colour, showing how the fabric and its edging could be worked separately. Such finds preserve the materials, seams and layers behind the outlines seen in paintings.

Fibres, textile work, and sewing

Silk was an important clothing material, but making it required sustained labour. In households engaged in silk production, women were responsible for tending silkworms, feeding them chopped mulberry leaves, and keeping them warm. A Southern Song painting of silk production, dated to about 1200, depicts workers weighing and sorting cocoons. The image places textile making within the work of rural communities, rather than treating fine clothing as something that appeared only in urban shops or elite households.

Women’s household work also included spinning yarn, weaving cloth, and sewing clothing. These tasks connected the production of fibres and fabric with the making of garments for everyday use. Song clothing included silk, while ramie and raw silk are recorded among the materials for sleeveless beizi ; coarse cloth was associated with some lower-status jackets. A garment’s fabric and finish could reflect both its purpose and its wearer’s means.

Hair, headwear, and personal appearance

Headwear was an important part of public appearance. Officials and scholars wore different forms of caps or formal headgear, including the futou, a soft cap, and various types of official headdress. Commoners and educated people also wore headscarves, sometimes secured with a decorative ring. The form of headwear could identify a person’s role or standing as well as complete an outfit.

Flowers were a widely enjoyed form of adornment. People of different ages, genders, and social ranks pinned natural or artificial flowers to their clothing or headwear. Emperors presented valuable flowers to officials, and court attendants could place flowers on the futou of princes and senior councillors. In the Southern Song, rules limited the number of flowers officials could wear according to rank. The custom thus served both personal display and formal court distinction.

Women also used a veil known as a gaitou when riding horses or donkeys. It covered the head and body and was worn to conceal the wearer. Its revival in the Song followed a period when it had fallen out of fashion. Such practices show that clothing and grooming could respond to movement through public space as well as to social convention.

Prescribed official dress included black leather shoes. Footbinding spread among some Song women. Cloth bindings altered the shape of the growing foot, linking bodily work with particular ideas of appearance and footwear.

Washing and urban personal care

Kaifeng accounts place hot-water sellers at bathhouse entrances, connecting washing with the street economy. Bathing also took place in private homes, inns and official lodgings. Temple bathhouses brought another setting, where scholars and officials could arrive with relatives or friends and combine washing with social contact.

Research on Song temple baths describes candidates gathering near the capital’s examinations and officials meeting companions at facilities elsewhere. Local patrons helped build or maintain bathhouses and sometimes sponsored bathing for monks and the wider public. Keeping such a facility operating required water, fuel, buildings and people to manage it.

Combs supplied another practical part of grooming. A medieval ivory example in the National Palace Museum is assembled from five pieces, joined at paired holes, with a row of teeth following a curved outline. Drawing teeth through hair separated the strands before arranging them, while pins and head coverings held the finished arrangement in place.

Regional change and cultural boundaries

The move from Kaifeng to Hangzhou in 1127 changed the political setting of Song dress without producing a single, uniform southern style. In the Southern Song capital, fashions from northern China remained popular. Clothing therefore carried traces of movement between regions, even as the court and its population were now based farther south.

Song authorities also tried at different times to control the adoption of clothing associated with neighbouring peoples. Rules restricted items linked to Khitan dress, including felt hats, and prohibited ordinary people from wearing some Khitan and Jurchen garments, with drama performers excepted from certain bans. Such rules reveal official attempts to regulate cultural boundaries in dress. Across the Northern and Southern Song, dress was shaped by both local routines and contact among communities, while rank, work, and personal means continued to affect what people wore.

For the wider setting, see Work, Clothing and Recreation in Song Communities: Everyday Life in Song China.