Description Tang dynasty (618-907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends.
About the Author Bu Yun Chen is assistant professor of history at Swarthmore College..
Tang Fashion is shown to have flourished in response to a confluence of social, economic, and political changes that brought innovative weavers and chic court elites to the forefront of history.
This first book on Fashion in premodern China is informed by archaeological sources--paintings, figurines, and Silk artifacts--and textual records such as dynastic annals, poetry, tax documents, economic treatises, and sumptuary laws.
Across the empire, elite men and women subverted regulations on dress to acquire majestic silks and au courant designs, as shifts in economic and social structures gave rise to what we now recognize as precursors of a modern Fashion system: a new consciousness of time, a game of imitation and emulation, and a shift in modes of production.
In Empire of Style, Bu Yun Chen reveals a vibrant Fashion system that emerged through the efforts of Tang artisans, wearers, and critics of clothing.
Its capital at Chang\'an was the most populous city in the world and was connected via the Silk Road with the critical markets and thriving cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East.
Description Tang dynasty (618-907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends
