Print Comment Vietnamese traditional ao dai By Peter Kauffner Visitors expecting a land of black pajamas are pleasantly surprised to find slender, long-hair women clad in ao dai, Vietnam’s national costume. This dress consists of a split-sided tunic over silk pantaloons. In world fashion, the ao dai stands out in several respects. As the uniform of school girls and shop clerks, it is both a formal dress and daily street wear. It is far more visible than either China’s qipao (cheongsam) or Korea’s hanbok. The garment is often made of sheer fabric. Each is individually made and a careful tailor will do 20 measurements to ensure a tight fit. The slits may extend above the waist to expose part of the midriff. “The ao dai covers everything, but hides nothing,” according to one saying. This feature allows the dress to combine sexuality and tradition, although the traditional version of the ao dai was an unrevealing multi-layered gown. “The shape of the female body is accentuated, but hidden as the dress clings tightly to it,” wrote Nhi Lieu, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “This sexualized image, however, is contained with the bounds of respectability and curbed under the sign of the “cultural”. What makes the ao dai unique in world fashion is the way it has made feminine beauty a focus of national feeling. Nothing says “Vietnam” like an image of school girls in white ao dai and non la (conical leaf hats). Vietnamese beauty contests generally include a segment in which the contestants wear ao dai. Such contests are extremely popular with both sexes in Vietnam (unlike the U.S., where the audience for beauty contests is primarily female). The contests seek queens who can represent the nation and uphold the four traditional virtues of cong (tidy),chaste). Yet at the same time they must entertain audience members who look for physical beauty and sexuality. Cong- dung-ngon-hanh was what a man looked for in a wife back in the days of arranged marriages. Such talk sounds very old fashioned to today’s younger generation. “No one thinks about the four skills anymore,” said Thuy, a university student. “They fall in love – and that’s it.” The white ao dai as a high school uniform is also too much culture for many. “When we were in middle school, we looked forward to wearing the ao dai,” said Nhung. “But after we wore it for a while, it just seemed inconvenient.” The ao dai is too hot for classes without air conditioning, Thuy explained. The of solid white silk makes any stain immediately visible. Students must be careful of rain, since this can make the thin fabric transparent. The great fear of a Vietnamese teenage girl is to have a flap of her tunic caught in the spokes of a motorcycle. In the worst case scenario, the top is pulled off, leaving the girl wearing only a bra and pantaloons. Although the motorcycle is the main form of transportation in urban Vietnam, an ao dai clad student on a bicycle is still a common sight. These beautiful “butterflies,” as the poets call them, brighten the appearance of the street. Writers who advocate the of the ao dai as a uniform cite its inconvenience as a virtue, a feature that teaches students feminine modesty and caution. There are many tales of tomboys trained in feminine demeanor by a father who requires them to wear ao dai. The general meaning of “ao dai” in Vietnamese is ‘gown.’ It thus refers to range of garments that an English-speaker would not think of ao dais. For example, a qipao is a “Chinese ao dai”. Vietnamese ao dai specifies the split-sided Vietnamese gown. This usage is not so much becaanyone is likely to confa Vietnamese ao dai with a gown from another country. Like pho (noodle soup), it attaches a nationalistic association to the item. Mislead by the fact that “dai” means “long,” many writers translate “ao dai” as “long gown.” The ao dai is long, not in the sense of being longer than some other type of gown, but rather in the sense that a gown is longer than a shirt. Folk legend traces the ao dai back to the Trung sisters, who led a rebellion against Chinese rule in 39AD. The two sisters (Hai Ba Trung) are Vietnam’s most celebrated heroes and are depicted in folk opera as wearing ao dai. Trinh Bach, who led a team that restored royal gowns in Hue, argues that basic design features of the ao dai can be traced back to medieval times and originally reflected a desire by the Hanoi court to distinguish its fashion from that of Beijing. Europe got its first glimpse of Vietnam from a short book by Jesuit missionary Cristoforo Borri published in 1631. The outfit for men he describes already sounds a bit like an ao dai: A gown “like those of the order of St. Benedict,” but with several layers of different colors so that “if any wind blows to lift them up, they look like peacocks.” Vietnamese women, meanwhile, wore multiple layers of “petticoats” and “doublets.” It was “the modestest garb in all India for even in the hottest weather they suffer no part of the body to be uncovered.” They wore transparent veils that “shows all their gaiety with modesty, and makes a beauteous majestic appearance.” Their huge hats nearly covered their faces and their hair was so long that it fell “down to their heels.” Certainly fashions have changed since the seventeenth century, but we can see from this description that several characteristically Vietnamese ideas about fashion have been preserved in the ao dai: the desire to cover as much of the body as possible and the of bright colors and thin fabrics to allow a woman to express her physical beauty and individuality. A decree issued by Lord Vu Vuong Two panels were sewn together in the front, two were sewn together in the back, and the fifth was a “baby flap”