ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the ways in which dress conveyed the political and cultural capital of Mongol women and puts forth the hypothesis that quotidian women’s dress in the Yuan dynasty resembled men’s dress, reflecting the status of women in Mongol society. It begins with an overview of the social and political status of elite Mongol women in the Yuan, which takes into account historical precedents, before turning to the roles that women played in the Yuan, and the importance of dress in expressing social and political aims. While Liao and Yuan excavated materials compliment the pictorial record, the clothing from this burial contrasts with the single known surviving depiction of an elite woman in Jurchen dress, Lady Wenji in Lady Wenji Returns to Han. In a courtly setting, the red silk robes depicted in Ilkhanid and Yuan court paintings were probably more typical than nasij.
