“Petticoat Fever” Driven by Chosŏn Korea Garments: Exploring a “fad” in Early Ming China and Its Implications for Regional Interactions between the Chosŏn and Ming Dynasties

Abstract

In the fifteenth century, Chosŏn Korean clothes were exported to the Jiangnan (江南) region in Ming China and became very popular among wealthy Chinese people. This was the so-called “Petticoat Fever”. This horsehair petticoat (Mamigun 馬尾裙) gave the wardrobe a fashionable silhouette by supporting and fully spreading the outer skirt. Literati wore them, too. Mamigun fashion, which once enjoyed great popularity in the Jiangnan area, disappeared after it was prohibited during the Ming period due to a change in power and a transition in policymaking. On the other hand, this study is also significant in that it corrects errors in the study of art history in Ming Dynasty. This study analyzed in detail "Ming Emperor Xianzong's Tour of the Lantern Festival(明憲宗元宵行樂圖)" in the collection of the National Museum of China. I argued that the picture was not a royal court painting (宮中畵), drawned in Beijing, but a piece painted in the Jiangnan area of the Ming dynasty. The artist adopted the mamigun fashion widely enjoyed in the region at the moment in order to express the most splendid and glamourous adornments one could imagine in the place of entertainment for the emperor during the Lantern Festival. "Ming Emperor Xianzong's Tour of the Lantern Festiva" is a clue to the customs and fashion culture of the Jiangnan area of Ming Dynasty in the 15th century. Many works of scholarship in Korea-China relations have tended to argue that culture and trade between Chosŏn and Ming Dynasties in the 15th century were exchanged only through envoys between Seoul of Chosŏn and Beijing of Ming. Mamigun is an interesting topic that gives us insight into the cultural exchange between the Chosŏn and Ming and can also be described as an episode that involves Cheju Island of Chosŏn and Jiangnan region of Ming, both regions that were marginal within Korea-China relations. This study will contribute to extending the scope of the history of exchange between Chosŏn Korea and Ming China by taking a broader perspective.