Monday, August 24, 2009

Vietnamese traditional costume - ao dai



Ao dai, a Vietnamese treasure, is the favourite choice of many Vietnamese women as well as designers. The dress appears to flatter every figure who wears it.

Its body-hugging top flows over wide trousers that brush the floor. Splits in the gown extend well above waist height and make it comfortable, easy to move in, and show clearly beauty of a woman’s figure. It is a symbol of Vietnamese beauty

Although virtually the whole body is swathed in soft flowing fabric, these splits give the odd glimpse of a bare midriff, making the outfit very sensual. Ladies eventually adopt Ao dai as the preferred national dress. The dress is also surviving as a key item in the nation’s modelling industry

Drawing on tradition
There are 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam, all with their own dress, many of which have appeared on the catwalk. Fifty-four ethnic groups and 54 different costumes introduce an image of the rich variety of traditional costumes that give creative ideas for fashion designers.

The most primitive yet modern costumes could be from the GiaRai people. Women of this group wear nothing but a small skirt. Men would take just a loincloth to go on any occasion. Then there are H’Mong girls, who wear a shirt, undergarments, leggings and a coiled scarf on their heads. Their skirts are usually in a cone shape with folds that enhance their gentleness.

The traditional Tay costume for a girl is a kerchief tied in a triangle on the forehead, simple indigo dress, belt and silver bracelets and chains while a Muong girl usually wears a medium length skirt, a short white shirt and a pair of silver earrings.

Thai girls wear a colourful scarf, short jacket with silver buttons in two lines and a tight black skirt. People of the Dzao minority share many similarities while at the same time are a little bit distinct.

Girls in the Dzao Do (Red Dzao) keep their hair long and fold it around their heads covered with the red cloth.

Designers love to look back to the past as well, trading the contemporary for old styles.

Clogs, the footwear that both male and female wore in the past, appear on the catwalk in many forms including bamboo and wood depending on the purpose.

Wooden clogs were used at home and they were made with a rattan strap and curved toe-cap for protection. The most popular clogs were self-pared with a slightly curved toe-cap and soft cloth-made strap which is cross-pierced. In Hue City, there was also a kind of clog that was painted with two colours and only rich people wore them.

As a traditional-style fashion, Vietnamese people sometime wear the clogs in summer, showing a new trend of fashion that is both traditional and modern.
But ao dai is the favourite and can be seen all over the country, as girls in white pick their way through muddy streets going home from school or sailing by in a graceful chatter on their bikes.

A cousin of ao dai, the peasant ao ba ba (pants outfit) is a simple ao dai and has been transformed for the catwalk into elegant haute couture adaptations. This, in turn, spawned myriad knockoffs among mass-market manufacturers.

In the past, Vietnamese women also wore ao tu than with skirts to differentiate themselves from men, who wore a similar costume with pants. Women were to wear a dress with a high collar that had the front and back of the dress sewn together with seams running down from under the arms.

Aside from the ao tu than and ao ngu than, the traditional look of Northern girls included a khan dong and a khan mo qua. The khan dong is a black piece of fabric wrapped around a girl's long hair so that it forms a tube around the hair.

The fabric-entubed hair is then wrapped around the crown of the head. Usually, the girl's hair is a little bit longer than the khan dong, forming a skinny, wispy ponytail sticking out of the end. This ponytail is left dangling down from the khan dong on one side of the head.

The Vietnamese call this hairstyle toc duoi ga because the ponytail resembles a rooster's tail (toc duoi ga means chicken- or rooster-tailed hair). For formal occasions, Vietnamese girls often used khan dong made of black velvet. Instead of the rooster-tailed hair, they would pin the extra hair down and cover their heads with a khan mo qua, meaning crow's beak kerchief.

Non La, another Vietnamese symbol is a conical hat made of woven, dried leaves. It is used to shade the head and face from the sun when going outside. The typical image of rural Vietnam is a handful of farmers wearing non la planting rice in the fields.
















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