Overview
The Sui lasted under forty years and reunified a China that had been split for nearly three centuries. Dress was part of the reunification: north and south had developed differently under separate regimes, and the Sui court had to build one system of official costume out of two — the framework the Tang would inherit and perfect.
Key garments and style
For men the characteristic garment is the yuanlingpao, a round-collared robe closing to the right with narrow sleeves. Its ancestry is northern and Central Asian, carried into China by the non-Han dynasties of the north, and it is more practical than the wide-sleeved cross-collar robe of the southern courts — a riding-derived garment adopted as civil dress. The Sui graded official robes by colour, so rank became readable at a distance, and this colour hierarchy is the part the Tang took over and elaborated.
Women wore a short jacket over a long skirt tied high on the chest, the high-waisted ruqun, with a long shawl over the arms. The line is slender in Sui depictions and grows fuller under the Tang.
Headwear followed the same northern logic, with the futou, a cloth wound over a frame, replacing older caps for officials.
Transition
The Tang took this reunified framework and opened it outward, absorbing Central Asian and Persian dress into one of the most cosmopolitan fashions in Chinese history.