Hi, that’s because people could wear jackets and coats over cheongsam to keep warm. I have a post about winterwear in the Republican era. More fashionable women would sometimes wear short sleeves even in winter. Working women or those less concerned with trends can wear a cheongsam with longer sleeves made in thicker fabrics as well; they would have the same cut as fashionable cheongsam so they’re not a separate style per se.

Fashion illustration by Ye Qianyu showing coats for long cheongsam, from Ling Long magazine, 1932.

Long sleeved cheongsam in thicker fabric, from the 1948 movie Spring in a Small Town.

Oh sorry I can’t really remember either, I mentioned it in the 1930s post and also this book review but there might be some other instances.

To recap, the origins of cheongsam/qipao are genuinely unclear and there could be multiple sources of inspiration. If I remember correctly, amateur fashion historians speak of two separate garments named ‘qipao’ from the 1920s: one a long coat inspired by Manchu women’s robes popular in 1921 but disappeared quickly afterwards, and another an unrelated one piece dress of a similar cut to contemporary aoqun popularized around 1925-6. The latter is what became the cheongsam of mainstream women’s fashion we’re familiar with.

I think even if the idea of a one piece long dress with side slits was taken from Manchu women’s fashion, the cheongsam of popular Han women’s fashion differed much too much from contemporary Manchu women’s dress to claim any affinity whatsoever. The cheongsam also didn’t 'descend’ from Manchu women’s robes in the way many popular history narratives frame it, in that there was no direct lineage and Manchu women played no role in the creation of it.

For the Ming I would recommend the classic Q版大明衣冠图志 by 撷芳主人, and the more recent 明鉴：明代服装形制研究 by 蒋玉秋. There’s also the slightly more obscure 明代服饰研究 by 王熹, though I haven’t seen a review of its contents so I can’t vouch for the quality. I’m under the impression that these books focus on ceremonial garments, so extra research needs to be done for changing civilian fashion trends. Unfortunately they’re all in Chinese as I don’t know of any good books in English or other languages.

For the Qing, there really exists no single book that’s even remotely historically accurate and devoid of methodological issues (e.g. 18th century erasure) that I’m aware of. Scholarship on Qing Dynasty Han women’s fashion in general is honestly very crap, so I would recommend steering clear of it. Amateur historians and collectors on social media often prove to be more reliable, so piecing bits together from random posts that I come across is sadly the best I can do. I’ve found some books unrelated to fashion history that ironically have better information on Qing popular fashion, you can see them in my book review tag.

I think sleeves started getting much shorter and more tight fitting in the 18th century, but wide sleeves saw something of a revival by the turn of the 19th. In the Jiaqing era, sleeves could be described as wide but not necessarily long, and usually had folded cuffs that reduced the length. I haven’t read about actual garments from that period so I can’t tell you concretely, but that appears to be the case from artworks.

The blogger 盥薇 did a recreation of Jiaqing era dress based on export paintings, in her interpretation the sleeves are also still a little too long to be entirely practical but definitely not as long and drape-y as that in earlier centuries. This outfit might work as a reference for your costume, since it also features a cloud collar? (on a side note, the comment section of this video gives me psychic damage, please don’t look)

About sheer, soft fabrics, yes they were indeed very popular around this time, and had been since the late Ming. Sheer clothes were usually meant for lounging around the house in warm weather and not worn outside, and sometimes you see women represented as forgoing underwear altogether. I’m not sure whether that’s an artistic embellishment, but it does feel feasible given the domestic setting.

I explained in this post that the cliche of ‘late Ming fashion continuing into the Qing’ only actually applies to the 1650s. So the Jiaqing era, being in the early 19th century, has nothing to do with the Ming.

(Here’s a pdf of the book for reference)

In my opinion, any book on Qing Dynasty fashion that uses a court dress laid flat as its cover image should be immediately dismissed, and that is exactly what I would say about this book. Unfortunately it’s yet another ethnographic account coming from a white anthropological perspective, as you’ve identified, and is only useful if you want a caricature of your culture. Like most authors on Qing Dynasty fashion, Chinese or not, Garrett takes the 19th century as the starting date of the dynasty and offers absolutely no information on anything prior to that. This is because of both the lack of resources available to her from before western colonialism and the general framing of Qing Dynasty fashion; a common mistake, but not an excusable one. The erasure and misrepresentation of fashion in the PRC is disappointing. The book is from 2007 though, and it reads like other books from the same time, so it’s not even bad in a unique way. I cannot stress this enough but please use recent literature wherever possible.

About the wedding dress thing, I wouldn’t say there is one single ‘traditional’ color since formal wedding dresses of the Han upper classes during the Qing had multiple pieces and were not monochromatic. In the first half of the twentieth century, wedding qungua had a black jacket and red skirt, but were also embroidered with gold or silver. Blue and black were common colors for the working class in the 19th century, and it makes sense for peasant women to wear what was economical. Having fancy weddings that were a special occasion was, really, an aristocratic and bourgeois custom, and I assume working people often just couldn’t be bothered.

This reminded me, I really should finish that series on Qing Dynasty Han women’s fashion. Seeing published white authors be cringe with such audacity kind of motivates me.

Already answered!

Unfortunately I think this has always been the case, since the rhetoric of early hanfu revivalists premised the whole movement on ethno-centric nationalism (after all, why do we need national dress if there is no nation?), so it’s easy for people to slip into it even just through casual participation if they don’t actively resist it. I would even go as far as saying that for many people the ‘normal’ hanfu enthusiast is a radical nationalist, because no singular group has the power to define what hanfu means or is. It’s becoming more visible recently because hanfu is becoming more popular. The misinformation is just what people want to see *sighs*.

Hmm thanks for bringing this to my attention, seems like they still work on mobile but not on desktop. I’m not sure how to fix this but in the meantime please use the tag of the series to see the older posts :)

A recent drama, The Long River, has some accurate Manchu court costumes, but there is no representation of civilian Han women’s fashion. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ve seen a single drama that even attempted to recreate Han women’s dress of the era.