Clothing and combat in the wuxia world

[Ken Cheng]

If you've watched old Japanese samurai movies, you've probably noticed that although the samurai wore ornate and sometimes cumbersome ceremonial clothing when not in combat, they always doffed these costumes and wore simpler clothing once combat began. The popular wuxia writers (Jin Yong and Gu Long) generally do not describe the clothing of their characters at length. They might refer to the color of a costume, but won't describe it in such detail that one can actually picture the outfits. Are they form-fitting or baggy? Short-sleeved or long? The writers do not tell us. Consequently, when the TV/film producers are left to make adaptations, they have plenty of leeway to decide what the costumes should look like. The TV/film producers, of course, are thinking about how good the costumes look on TV/film...not whether they're practical costumes for martial arts combat. Consequently, we've gotten some very different and unusual costume designs for wuxia adaptions in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and today. In each decade, however, the clothing, no matter how nice it looks onscreen, is often impractically cumbersome for actual combat. What do you imagine the clothing of wuxia characters to actually be like?

[Xiao Feng]

Exactly what everyone else would wear in their respective dynasty i guess. I'm not into ancient or medieval fashion so i wouldn't know for sure.

And actually, samurai's wear a lot of armour into battle. Watch The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise and you will know what I mean. Cruise actually conveniently forgot to wear his headgear so as to show his pretty face on camera.

[wkeej]

a bit off-topic.
seeing hsds79 again, the costumes do look very funny esp guys with those cloth hats.
the strange thing about costumes in show is that the actors/actresses will wear the same costume. e.g. zm is always in pink/white. the old hr (=barbara) is always in yellow. hehe.

[flyingfox2002]

Actually, JY is pretty clear about what they wear. Obviously, he doesn't go into detail by detail description because he's not gay and not into fashion. (Imagine a novel in which half of the book was about fashion )

A simple "ching po" (light green longrobe) or "dui da" (shorter, tighter outfit) is sufficient. Generally my impression is that in the older eras, fighters usually wore long sleeve clothing, as evident by the frequent description of "jau fung" (sleeve wind). Characters generally had a longer robe outside and then an inner outfit (pajamas of sorts) and if the weather is cold, they put on a fur coat on the outside. They tightened their clothing with a sash or a rope.

I think China's clothing for their JY adaptations is more realistic - not counting the weird low cut dresses or GJ's strange blue jacket (I happen to own one exactly like it) in LOCH. I've heard that YH's hairstyle in LOCH2003 is based on the genuine Jin hairstyle, but his clothing didn't seem royal enough.

I crack up hysterically when I saw the funny clothes that the people wore in DGSD83. I didn't watch it, but I saw some screen grabs.

[Battosai]

Wuxia's pretty off-the scale compared to old skool samurai movies though. In a world where qing gong, neigong and chi blasts exist, I doubt clothing would make much different. In fact, I bet Huang Rong can fight as effectively in corset with her foot bound and wearing kimono, as she would in plain tunic.

[Zhuge Liang]

My biggest reservation are those tvb 80s adaptions where some characters had those horrid metallic & shiny costumes. >_<

[rabadi]

My biggest reservation are those tvb 80s adaptions where some characters had those horrid metallic & shiny costumes. >_<

Which adaptations were those? I thought the costumes and hairstyles from 1980s are better than today's adaptations (excluding movies), since today's ones are so modern-looking, don't really fit for wuxia period.

[Zhuge Liang]

80s TVB ROCH and 80s DGSD for example.

Some of todays are far too modern i agree as well.

[rabadi]

80s TVB ROCH and 80s DGSD for example.

Some of todays are far too modern i agree as well.

I actually kind of like clothing in DGSD 1981

[Tazzy1972]

Imagine designer's now dressing up the Wuxia heroes.... DY would be in Armani, XZ in some old hand-me-downs, and XF in Levi's....

[JigSta]

YG would be Calvin Klein, GJ would be Kmart LHC would be any old Op Shop