The elegant pleated skirts of Miao Ethnic Group

Types of Miao Traditional Skirts

The Miao ethnic group has various traditional skirts, including tubular skirts, girdle skirts and pleated skirts. Among all styles, the pleated skirt (百褶裙) stands out as the most representative and distinctive one.

Origin and Folk Legends

General Evolution of Pleated Skirts

A Miao pleated skirt features numerous dense vertical pleats, ranging from hundreds to thousands in total. It boasts exquisite artistic charm yet involves extremely complex craftsmanship. Except for Miao women in Western Hunan, most Miao females are fond of wearing this classic garment.

It is recorded that ancient Miao people mainly wore tubular skirts. Later, to tell their costumes apart from those of other ethnic groups and distinguish different Miao branches, locals gradually created and popularized pleated skirts.

Legend of Pleated Skirt Creation

A widely-spread tale in central Guizhou tells the origin of the pleated skirt. In ancient times, Miao costumes looked almost identical to those of other groups. To create a unique symbol for the Miao people, a mother and her daughter determined to design an exclusive skirt.

After much deliberation, they drew inspiration from the layered folds of green wild fungi on hillsides. They tailored a skirt mimicking the fungi’s texture and wore it to the flower fair, a traditional Miao recreational activity. The novel design won high praise from other Miao women. Before long, pleated skirts were adopted across Miao villages. Different Miao branches also developed pleated skirts of varied lengths with unique features.

Craftsmanship and Structural Features

Miao pleated skirts are exquisitely crafted with dense, neat and abundant pleats, and some pieces even have over a thousand folds. The skirt keeps a straight vertical silhouette while flowing gracefully horizontally, and is adorned with delicate embroidered patterns all over.

Taking pleated skirts from Huangping, Guizhou as an example: they are made of narrow, hand-woven dark purple fabric, with a total length of 16 to 26 meters. The whole cloth is woven and dyed by local artisans themselves.

The making procedures are as follows: Lay the hand-woven cloth on grass or a sun mat, spray juice of hyacinth bletilla (白及) evenly over the fabric, then fold it into uniform pleats. Spray the plant juice again and fix the shape by stringing up the pleats with white threads.

A complete pleated skirt consists of three parts: the skirt head, the skirt body and the skirt hem. The hem is the most gorgeous and essential part, decorated with four rows of horizontal patterns arranged from top to bottom:

1. Little human figure (小人纹) – embroidered pattern
2. Birds' wings figure (鸟翅纹) – embroidered pattern
3. Dragon figure (龙纹) – woven pattern
4. Dragon figure (龙纹) – woven pattern

Classification by Length

Miao pleated skirts are categorized into three types based on length: long, mid-length and short styles.

• Long pleated skirt: Reaches the instep
• Mid-length pleated skirt: Extends below the knees
• Short pleated skirt: Stops above the knees

The short skirt worn by Miao women in Leishan is particularly famous, with a length of merely about 20 centimeters. The local Miao community is thus known as the Short Skirt Miao (短裙苗).

Legend of the Short Pleated Skirt

There is also a touching folk legend about the origin of the short pleated skirt in Leishan. Long ago, a handsome and valiant hunter from a Miao village caught a beautiful golden pheasant. He presented the bird to his beloved girl named Abang.

To show her affection, Abang wove cloth and embroidered patterns by referencing the gorgeous plumage of the golden pheasant. She finally made a brightly decorated short skirt and dressed herself up as beautifully as the pheasant. Soon after, girls in surrounding villages followed suit, and the colorful and artistic embroidered short skirt was passed down from generation to generation.