midnightriverRookielv1

Wanted to reply to your comment. Been following some of the developments, and saw some pictures of the actual structure of the Dior dress - beat for beat almost exactly the same as mamian - two pieces of fabric with one waist, wrap dress with pleats between three large panels. I mean, it MIGHT be coincidence, but if not, I think this is pretty serious. Mainly because this is a large international company claiming ethnic designs as their own without ANY attribution. And raises two worrisome possibilities. If Dior patents their "hallmark silhouette.. With new elegant design," could they sue mamian based hanyuansu makers? Will the international community who know Dior but not mamianqun, think that mamianqun is some sort of Chinese knock off of Dior? I'm usually pretty easy going when it comes to questions of cultural appropriation, and their significance, but in this case, I'm worried about real world legal, and reputation ramifications for hanfu makers, wearers, and enthusiasts.

Super similar in shape, and at least superficially similar in construction. Would need to actually see the panels and pleats of the Dior dress to determine structural similarity, and I think needs either fashion expert or official designer statement to determine degree of inspiration from mamian. Without that information, I wouldn't make any accusations of appropriation, at this point they just happen to look very similar, but definitely suspicious.

Any word if the outer long bijia was historically menswear?

All the women are basically wearing the same style just in different patterns. Qixiong qun (skirt tied above the breast), daxiushan (large sleeve "shirt"), and pibo (the "scarf"). The man's wearing a yuanling kuipao (less formal round collar robe without an additional bottom piece), and some sort of cross collar inner shirt/robe with a diexie belt.

There's some contention about whether this style of dress is historically accurate to the Ming Dynasty. The LOOK DEFINITELY existed during the Ming, but the wearing of dahu as outerwear was reportedly most common during the early Ming, and was usually dahu outside of a tieli rather than a daopao. I do note that Roya isn't wearing the large sleeve daopao of the late Ming (can't completely verify if daopao without being able to see it), which puts the LOOK more in line with historical examples. By the late Ming, when large sleeve daopao came into fashion, dahu was usually worn as a middle layer, outside the tieli, but inside a yuanlingpao (round collar robe). The reason I bring it up is because the Dopo + dapho (daopao + dahu) look is common in Korean dramas, and might lead to questions if you're wearing daopao + outer dahu, so now you'll have an answer! The individual pieces are DEFINITELY hanfu, wearing the two together is unclear from a historical perspective, I'd say evidence suggests that it's wearing hanfu in hanbok style. I wear daopao with dahu, and daopao with tieli, and dahu as a middle layer (OMGoodness it gets hot) but if you're a stickler for historical accuracy, maybe just stick with the last two.

This is cosplay of Zixia from Stephen Chow's CLASSIC "A Chinese Odyssey."

It's quite rare to find good authentic hanfu in dramas actually, which is why hanfu enthusiasts who like historical accuracy will sometimes joke that less accurate hanfu on the market are "yinglou zhuang," studio clothes.

Oh cool, the pattern on her first top looks like it has tigers and the Five Poisons!

I think it's supposed to be Jin Dynasty, the top, from inside to out looks like it could be a qulingshan (hard to tell, but the folds that jut out from inside the ru collar suggest qu collar inner shirt/blouse), with ru outside. The outermost layer looks like a pearl shawl. The bottom should then be a poqun, or jiaoyuqun, skirt made with strips of cloth sewn together, rather than the pleated skirts often seen in the Song and Ming Dynasty.

Generally agree, but buttons aren't a guarantee that a piece isn't hanfu - round collar robes of the Tang, Song, and Ming almost always have buttons, and Ming upright collar robes were also buttoned.