"Yuyang Nai came agitatedly and broke the neon dress feather song", this poem in Bai Juyi's "Long Hate Song" must not be unfamiliar to everyone. In particular, the "Neon Dress Feather Song" mentioned in the poem is reminiscent of a group of palace women wearing neon dresses and dancing in the main hall, which is really pleasing to the eye.
Such a beautiful scene, we can say that we have seen a lot in costume dramas. The women in these costume dramas are dragging long skirts to the ground one by one, and their clothes are fluttering like fairies. However, after a long time, I believe that everyone will definitely have a question. Ancient women liked to wear long skirts so much, and the ancient ground did not have such a thing as tiles, were they not afraid of getting dirty?
Moreover, in the TV series, these women often wear long skirts on the street, all the way down, it is simply to do free sanitation work for the street, is it that these ancient women wearing skirts are so lacking in heart?
In fact, the reason why we think so is that we have fallen into a misunderstanding. The scene of wearing a skirt in a costume drama is completely different from the real history.
In ancient times, the gorgeous long skirts like those in TV dramas were generally only worn on performances or specific ceremonial occasions, and were not often worn every day. This kind of long skirt was roughly divided into 2 categories in ancient times, one before the Tang Dynasty and one after the Tang Dynasty.
Before the Tang Dynasty, the long skirt was called "Liuxian Skirt", the most familiar nature of the Chinese people had to be the one worn by the Western Han Empress Zhao Feiyan, the Liuxian skirt was a typical mopping long skirt, and Zhao Feiyan was because the long skirt mopped the floor to leave too many folds, and these folds appeared more fairy under the wind, so it was named "Liuxian Skirt".
Although the Liuxian skirt is beautiful, everyone ignores that Zhao Feiyan wears this dress on the premise that she only wears it when she dances for Emperor Hancheng. It can be seen that long skirts were actually used as performance costumes in ancient times.
The skirt after the Tang Dynasty is the "pomegranate skirt", which is also a kind of long skirt, compared to the Liuxian skirt, it slightly shortened the skirt, and the color tends to be bold and bright, rather than the cool tone of the Liuxian skirt. This is all related to the significant improvement of social living standards after the Tang Dynasty, and women are full of enthusiasm for life and naturally more unrestrained in the use of color.
It is worth mentioning that the pomegranate skirt is more economical than the liuxian skirt in the fabric, and the popularity of the ancient folk is much higher than that of the liuxian skirt. In the late Tang Dynasty, basically the women engaged in folk art were all hand-held. For example, in "Pipa Line", the woman who played the pipa that Bai Juyi saw in the Xunyang River head was "the silver grate with the head of the tungsten head was broken, and the blood-colored Luo skirt turned over the wine stain", and the "blood-colored Luo skirt" was the so-called pomegranate skirt.
Compared with the pomegranate skirt, the skirt that is really the most widely popular in the folk should be the skirt. This skirt is generally a "top bottom" structure, the top hangs down to the knee, and the bottom is a skirt from the waist to the ankle. In addition, a pair of pants will be worn in the skirt to facilitate women's labor.
The skirt of this kind of skirt is shorter than that of the fairy skirt and the pomegranate skirt, and there is basically no mopping of the floor, so naturally it is not afraid of getting dirty. Later, the skirt was further improved, and by the Song Dynasty, the hem of the tunic rose from the knee to the waist, and the hem of the hem of the lower garment was further shortened. Such a condensed skirt style is already very close to modern skirts, and it is not afraid to step on or get dirty.
Unfortunately, whether it is a fairy skirt, a pomegranate skirt or a skirt, it has completely disappeared into history with the shaving and changing the dress system after the Qing army entered the customs in the early Qing Dynasty. And after the Qing Dynasty, women's service, everyone has seen a lot in the Qing Palace drama, it is a kind of long shirt called a long shirt, there is no mopping skirt such a thing to speak of, naturally there is no such thing as dirty. Fang is convenient, but in terms of beauty, it is still a big difference from the long skirt of the early days.
Therefore, although ancient women liked skirts, they did not wear them every day, but only on specific occasions or performances. On such occasions, there will generally be someone to support the skirt, or the venue will be carefully cleaned, and there is no fear of soiling the skirt. And the reason why we felt that the skirt would get dirty earlier was actually that we had been deceived by the costume drama for many years.