Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands: Commercial Embroidery and the Fashionable Accessory in Mid-to-Late Qing China

Abstract

This paper explores how the growth of commercialized textile production entwined with fashionable consumption to stimulate new styles in Chinese women’s dress during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on the development of Suzhou’s embroidery industry, the paper demonstrates the shift towards the embroidered accessory during this period and discusses how production systems delineated the possibilities of fashionable dress. Combining analysis of embroidered objects with vernacular and commercial texts detailing the growth of this industry, the paper considers the impact of commercialization not only upon styles of dress, but also upon the women who wore and produced these fashionable accessories, and in so doing, connected to contemporary cultural trends.