Mistress Antonia brings us these delightful outfits for Charley and Posey Panda – late Sui, early Tang Dynasty garb for the categories Out Of Your Comfort Zone (being from the Far East!), One Metre Material Project, and Togs Togs Undies!
Mistress Antonia says:
I can only offer the most modest documentation…
Posey’s outfit is modelled on images of court women of the Tang dynasty. She’s wearing a two-piece outfit (襦裙), a typical Tang dynasty outfit consisting of a blouse (襦, ru) and a wrap-around skirt (裙). Charley’s wearing formal attire, consisting of a round-collared robe (yuanlingshan 圓領衫) over an inner robe (tie li, 貼裏).
Both pandas have a full set of underclothes. I didn’t have a lot of information about Tang underwear specifically, so I modelled them on more modern Hanfu underwear.
I gave Posey a pink peony headdress because large flowers on heads crop up in some Tang Dynasty paintings, such as Zhou Fang’s Beauties wearing flowers. I wanted some version of the typical scholar’s/official’s hat for Charley, but it wasn’t really something I could make myself, and buying one was financially prohibitive, but I spotted felt bowler hats with ears on Ebay for just $5– and I thought that maybe a panda would rather have room for his ears than for a topknot he doesn’t have anyway. Everything was made from fabric I already had, and almost all of it just scrap. Total expenditure for the project (excluding pandas) was about $15.
