Tang Dynasty Attire: Women’s Everyday Dress – Creating Designs on Fabric

Various Patterns and Designs on Fabric
In the early Tang Dynasty, a major style of women’s attire was half-sleeve blouses with long skirts. The above picture shows a lady wearing a tight-sleeved, collarless, and half-sleeve short blouse outside, and a long skirt.
In the Tang Dynasty, there were five or six methods for creating silk design on clothes. The first was colored brocade. Colorful brocade was used to weave decorative patterns. The most popular one was called ChengDu Ke brocade in small patterns. It was mostly used for the border of the collar or for decorating the half-sleeve blouses. The second was special imperial brocade. There were different patterns such as a pair of birds, goats, flying phoenixes, and scales. They were brightly colored and were very pretty. The third style was embroidery: five color embroidery or gold thread embroidery. The fourth was gold or silver powder painting. Gold and silver powder was used for decorating the materials of clothes. The fifth was printing and dying. There were two kinds: multi-colored chromatic dying and single color dying.

Source:
http://www.pureinsight.org/pi/articles/2002/10/21/1162.html