Overview
Women wore a short jacket over a high-waisted long skirt (ruqun), draped with a long gauze shawl (pibo) and sometimes a half-sleeve overgarment (banbi), in bold colors; a fuller figure came into fashion. Strikingly, some women wore men’s or Central Asian (Hu) dress and rode out freely.
Key garments and style
Officials wore the round-collar robe (yuanlingpao) with futou headwear, rank shown by color — purple and scarlet at the top, green and blue below. Foreign fabrics, hats and music all left their mark.
Transition
The Song would replace this openness with disciplined restraint.