Linen is easy for modern readers to place: European, relaxed, expensive, summer. Ramie is harder to place.
In English, ramie has been called China grass, grass linen, grass cloth, or China linen. In China, it became the fibre behind xiabu — literally, “summer cloth”.1
That makes ramie more than a linen substitute. It belongs to another textile story: one shaped by humid summers, patient handwork, tribute records, scholar clothing, and a very Chinese understanding of ease.
Key Terms Before We Begin
| Term | Simple Meaning | Why It Matters Here |
|---|---|---|
| Ramie | A natural plant fibre | The fibre behind Chinese summer cloth |
| China grass | A historical English name for ramie | Shows ramie’s long association with China |
| Xiabu | Literally “summer cloth” | A traditional Chinese ramie textile made for heat |
| Tongbu | A fine tribute cloth in Tang records | Shows refined summer cloth entered official value systems |
| Baizhu | White ramie cloth | Appears in scholar-official and literary contexts |
| Chengziyi | A Ming robe-like garment | Gives this dress its logic of space and ease |
| Yanju | Private, informal dressing | Comfortable dress for reading, receiving friends, and cultivated daily life |
Ramie Is Not Linen. It Answers a Different Climate.
Linen is loved for its relaxed wrinkles and soft, worn-in ease. Ramie behaves differently. It often feels cleaner, drier, and more structured. When well processed, it does not simply fall onto the body; it can hold the fabric slightly away from the skin.
That little space matters.
In humid summer weather, comfort is not only about softness. It is also about air, structure, and whether a fabric can stay wearable when the skin is warm. This is why ramie made sense long before air conditioning: it helped create coolness not by becoming limp, but by holding a breathable distance around the body.
Xiabu: China’s Summer Cloth
AI-generated illustrative diagram of the jisha (绩纱) process in traditional xiabu making. It shows a simplified sequence from prepared ramie fibres to hand-joined strands and twisted yarn. This image is a visual aid, not a historical source.
The Chinese word xiabu means “summer cloth”. Traditionally, it was made from ramie. The process was slow and demanding: the plant had to be prepared, scraped, split into fibres, joined into longer strands, twisted or spun, woven, washed, and finished.
One of the hardest steps was jisha: joining the fine ramie fibres by hand. The maker worked with strands that were dry, fine, and easy to break, connecting them patiently until they could become a continuous thread.
This is why fine ramie cloth should not be understood as simple rustic fabric. Raw ramie can be stiff. Fine ramie cloth is made fine. Its lightness comes from plant fibre, but also from labour: splitting, joining, degumming, weaving, and finishing until the cloth becomes cool, breathable, and structured enough for summer dressing.
When Summer Cloth Became Tribute
Yuanhe Junxian Tuzhi, vol. 33, Qing edition. Source: Wikimedia Commons / Tianyi Pavilion Museum, Public Domain.
In the Tang dynasty text Yuanhe Junxian Tuzhi, the entry for Changzhou records: “Yuanhe tribute: tongbu.”2
This is a small line, but it matters. The Tang dynasty was one of the most cosmopolitan and culturally influential periods in Chinese history. If a cloth appears in a Tang tribute record, it was not merely everyday village fabric. It had entered an official system of value.
Tongbu is generally understood as a fine cloth associated with lightness — the kind of cloth that could be rolled, stored, or transported in a tube. Whether we read it as a technical textile category or as a tribute item, it points to the same idea: refined summer cloth could move from local craft into state recognition.
So ramie has always existed at different levels. It could be practical, local, and breathable. But when finely processed, it could also become refined enough to be recorded, gifted, and valued.
White Ramie and the Scholar’s Summer
Ramie also appears in Chinese literary memory through baizhu, or white ramie cloth.
The Tang writer-official Liu Zongyuan once wrote of “a spring robe cut from white ramie, and a black gauze court cap hung aside.”3 The line is not a fashion manual. Its value is cultural context.
Liu was not a minor poet casually naming a fabric. He was a major Tang writer and official, the kind of literary figure whose work shaped elite language, moral imagination, and later classical education. When white ramie appears in this world, it tells us that the fabric belonged not only to labour or countryside use, but also to the wardrobe and imagination of cultivated scholar-officials.
This is the beauty of ramie: it does not need heavy decoration to carry meaning. Its refinement comes from material, climate, and restraint.
What Was Chengziyi?
Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden, Ming dynasty. Source: Wikimedia Commons / The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0.
The second reference behind this dress is Chengziyi, a robe-like garment discussed in Ming-dynasty writing.
For a modern reader, the easiest way to understand it is this: Chengziyi was not “homewear” in the casual modern sense. It belonged to yanju — a scholar-official’s private, informal mode of dressing. But informal did not mean careless.
Think less of a bathrobe, and more of an elegant house coat or scholar’s robe: something worn away from official duty, for reading, writing, receiving friends, or living quietly. Comfortable, but still composed.
Ming writer and historian Wang Shizhen discussed Chengziyi in Gugu Bugu Lu, a text concerned with Ming institutions, customs, and social change. He described Chengziyi as a garment marked by a horizontal line or division at the waist; without that line, the garment was closer to daopao or zhiduo. He also noted that these robe forms were commonly used for yanju.4
This gives us a clothing logic, not just a historical shape. Chengziyi suggests that daily clothing can have room without becoming sloppy. It can be relaxed, but still dignified. It can belong to private life, but still feel intentional.
From Old Clothing Logic to a Modern Ramie Dress
Our ramie robe dress is not a reconstruction of Chengziyi.
It does not copy historical dress. It borrows a logic: a long vertical line, space around the body, a composed front overlap, an easy sleeve, and a waist structure that keeps looseness from becoming shapeless.
The ramie gives the dress its dry, breathable structure. The robe-like cut gives the body room. The inner slip dress solves the problem of summer transparency. The adjustable inner waist tie keeps the loose body stable when walking.
This is where historical research becomes useful to modern dressing. Not as costume. Not as surface symbolism. But as a way to ask better design questions.
How can a summer dress be loose, but not shapeless? How can it feel cultural, but still everyday? How can it be minimal, but not anonymous?
For XXLSMILE, this is why we make fewer pieces and study them more slowly. Slow fashion is not only about producing less. It is about giving each piece enough material reason, historical reason, and practical reason to stay in a wardrobe.
Ramie answers the heat. Chengziyi answers the body. Together, they remind us that ease can have structure — and that quiet clothing can still carry memory.
