bernadette banner's recentish youtube video where she has a friend as a guest on the channel to show the process of making a 1930's era qipao is SO cool. the construction and shaping techniques are simply so different from the kind of garment-making processes I'm familiar with! the end result is deceptively simple-looking, but the methods for making such a simple garment fit really elegantly are mindblowing. historical fashion is so cool!
@soph_sol as a knitter, cannot express how it feels to see blocking used like this.
@Betty oh man, yeah, I bet! I looked at those parts of the process with awe, like, every kind of fibre arts is witchcraft, but that was extra witchcrafty
@soph_sol But yeah, the way the shape of the thing is mostly starch???? Gosh, next time you're watching a drama and someone gets stuck in a rainstorm or falls in a fountain I guess now you'll know.
@Betty lolll YEAH. I do wonder how these garments were cleaned! unlike the unwashably-fancy garments I'm most familiar with (from the european middle ages, when you wore linen under-garments between the fancy things and your human body), the qipao seems to be mostly worn directly against the skin. body oils and sweat and so forth WILL be getting on it! yes the collar is removable for frequent washing and re-starching, since necks get dirty and greasy and crumpled the fastest, but what about the rest of it??
@soph_sol I mean, I maybe you're wearing a doudou or something underneath? Or a bra, I don't know what kind of political underwear we're on.
The interior placket would protect the edge that's visible from getting stained, though, so maybe you could just spot-clean?
(Did you see the whip-stitch on the collar? That's some tiny whip-stitch for a detachable collar.)
@Betty a bra or dudou wouldn't be full coverage, though! still plenty of skin-to-qipao contact. and even if nothing's visible of the body oil that'll get on the inside of the qipao, at the very least the armpits are gonna start to stink eventually. something under there needs to be washable!
@Satsuma goddd I GUESS?? it would be much harder to restarch all those metres of beautifully crisp bias trim, though, with it sewn on....and I can't imagine that would be removed for washing and restarching, given that sewing it on seemed to be the most labourious part of making the qipao in the first place!