The Mao years were also the time of the pattern book, a characteristic genre of publishing in the Mao years. Pattern books were core to the dissemination of skills needed for the making of the clothing worn in the New China ushered into being by the Communist Party. Privately published, crudely illustrated publications produced largely for sewing schools in the early 1950s gradually gave way later in the decade to increasingly standardized works written by research groups or, later, revolutionary committees, produced in ever greater print runs in cities across China. They made available a view of contemporary clothing in which the foreground was occupied by the Zhongshan suit.