Even if we look back at Cixi's dress now, we can't help but sigh, it's exquisite! Her demand for clothes can be described as really high. The process of designing, selecting materials, making, sending samples and storing a pair of shoes can be described as the production process of "luxury customization" in modern times. According to records, Cixi specially set up a special fashion factory behind Shi Si Mountain in Kunming Lake of the Summer Palace. This fashionable factory has an industrial zone responsible for sericulture, silk weaving, silk dyeing and shoemaking, just like a small town.
Even the ladies-in-waiting who work here have higher status. In Qian Qian, in order to protect their jade hands, they don't have to do rough work, and there are special canteens to provide them with food. There are so many maids working there that they are reluctant to leave when they get married, because it is really a good job. I have to say that the level of the shoe factory is excellent, and the embroidery of the upper is even made for real flowers. It can be seen that the skills of embroidering maids at that time were also very good. We can carefully observe the excessive color of real flowers and show it with skillful hands and lines. In addition to the exquisite upper, the heel that is easily overlooked by us is also very attentive. As we know, ancient shoes were the shoes at the bottom of flowerpots, in other words, high heels, and the height was about 7cm to 12cm. The reason why the heel is carefully made is that in order to reduce vibration and noise, the sole is sewn together with many layers of cloth.
At the same time, the heel is not exposed, and it is inlaid with pearls of different sizes, and then arranged and combined on the heel. Use at least 20 yuan and at most 500 yuan. There are so many exquisite details that it takes a lot of effort to make shoes. It takes about a month to make a pair of shoes, but for Empress Dowager Cixi, she just looks at them and puts them in a shoe store. Empress Dowager Cixi was born to like gold and silver jewelry and lived a luxurious life. As we all know, when she died, she had a big pearl in her mouth, which was priceless. Most of the funerary objects were gold and silver jewelry. It is precisely because of this feature that many ministers will try their best to give her some precious jewels, precious stones, agates, pearls and so on in order to please her on holidays or birthdays. Once Yuan Shikai gave Empress Dowager Cixi a pair of shoes. Those shoes are inlaid with the best pearls, which can be said to be rich and powerful. At that time, it cost 700,000 taels of silver to make these shoes.
No matter how beautiful a beautiful woman is, she will eventually grow old. Dressed up with exquisite makeup, even beautiful women are still elegant when they are late. Even today, standing at the forefront of the current trend, Cixi's attitude towards fashion is not inferior. Her taste of leading the foreign style and keeping up with fashion was really a fashion model for the ladies of "upper class" in Beijing at that time.