Laws in Vietnam

A Vietnamese folk verse us: Three young girls carry baskets of rice on their heads to the pagoda, But the girl wearing the beautiful yếm bra charms the monk. Another folk verse tells of a girl who nourishes the following hope: If only the river could be as wide as span of my hand And my yếm's ribbon, a bridge for you to come see me. The wood carvings at some communal houses built during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show young female dancers wearing Vietnamese yếm that vaguely show the outline of their surging, beautiful breasts. In a traditional chèo opera, Thị Màu likes to flirt with men. One day after returning from the village pagoda, she gives her servant a provocative "No!" The spring wind has lifted my peach yếm, You saw the rice-cake cones beneath, Why not come light the incense? In the old days, when a boy fell in love with a girl and wanted her to consider his love, he would touch her hand. She communicated acceptance of his love by allo...

The "modern" tunic came in during the 1930s, although Vietnamese women in the countryside still wore the traditional tunic. Some people believe the áo dài must have first appeared in the South (Nam Bộ) because this region was the first under French domination and was a colony directly under French administration. The Vietnamese there were the first to wear Westernized clothes. Westernization came later to the North, which was a protectorate. In addition, the North had a Sino-Vietnamese traditional culture that had been established for two thousand years while the Vietnamese culture in the south was only several hundred years old. Others think the modern áo dài appeared in the North, as designed by Cát Tường, a painter whose pseudonym, Le Mur, is the literal French translation of his name, Tường (the Wall). For that reason, the new tunic was called the "Lemur dress". Cát Tường could easily sell his designs at his dressmaking business. Yet still others believe...

Women wore the traditional Vietnamese tunic when they were not working in the fields. urban women wore the garment for festive or solemn occasions or when they went to the pagoda. The traditional tunic differs from one region to another. The North of Việt Nam (Bắc Bộ) and central Việt Nam (Trung Bộ) have many tunics, including an unbuttoned one with two front flaps of equal length that hang freely and one with front flaps tied together and worn over a bodice that covers the neck for modesty's sake. A five-piece unbuttoned tunic has an outer, larger flap on the left side that is twice as broad as the inner flap on the right; a belt keeps the flaps from hanging too low. The four-flapped tunic was very popular in Kinh Bắc, a region of traditional culture north of the Red River and including Bắc Ninh Province and part of Bắc Giang province. This tunic, often worn over two others, is called the "three-piece dress"; women wear its third part made of gauze when going on pilg...

Traditional Confucian culture extolled community and family. Women were not considered as individual but only as instrument for perpetuating the family lineage. The woman's duty was as wife and mother. She had no need to show herself by wearing fancy clothes or using make-up, especially after marriage. A serious woman's dress was modest and did not display the graceful curves of her body, especially her breasts and buttocks. Some teenage girls even wrapped their breasts to diminish attention and to avoid being considered coquettish. Even the word "vú" (breast) was considered vulgar and banished from decent conversation. The áo dài, with its aesthetics, abolished such Confucian taboos by replacing the Confucian spirit of community with Western individualism, for a woman in an áo dài asserted herself as someone with an independent identity.

No known document records this garment's emergence. However, its appearance is likely tied to when Vietnamese learned to plant cotton, spin, and weave 30-40 centimeter broad cloth on a rudimentary loom. Also, it may come from when they learned to plant mulberry, raise silkworms, spin, and then weave thin, soft cloth such as crepe, gauze, and fine, thin silk. The four-panelled traditional dress is a gauze or silk robe worn over a white or yellow shirt. The robe consists of four narrow pieces of fabric that run the length of the body. Two pieces are joined at the back down to the heel. The front two pieces are joined with the two back pieces down to the waist and the ties together into a knot under a green, pink, or yellow belt. The robe is usually brown, black, or ebony gauze. Women attending spring festival often wear an áo mớ ba which is a set of three robes: the outer one is black or brown gauze, while the two inner ones are either light yellow, lotus-coloured, or sky blue. I...

Among the factors differentiating the world's peoples are language, housing, and dress. According to Vietnamese scholar Phan Kế Bính's Vietnamese Customs, "most of our dress since the Tang Dynasty has imitated the Chinese." Chinese civilisation influenced Vietnamese culture during the thousand years the Northern (Chinese) people dominated Viet Nam. Court dress (headwear, clothes, belt, garments, boots) and ancient military uniforms (hats, armour, clothes, shoes) reflect this influence. However, the Chinese presence did not affect civilian clothing for the common people, particularly the women's robe called "áo tứ thân" or "four-panelled traditional dress". Áo tứ thân is the forerunner of the áo dài. It does not look like a Chinese woman's robe; instead, it is a long, sleeveless dress without trousers but split up to the knees.

This might be a good summary: "Beautiful, but not for every woman and every occasin". Or: "elegant", "graceful", "simple but showing off the woman's slender form", "a charming dress with its flaps fluttering attractively in the wind..." Visitors to Viet Nam have used all sorts of adjective to express their admiration for the traditional tunic worn by Vietnamese women. Because the áo dài is close-fitting, it becomes slender women, as most young Vietnamese women are. It is like Raymond de Dalmas' description of the kimono as "perfectly suitable for the Japanese women's particular beauty and making them appear even more lovely". Yet we don't often meet women wearing kimonos in Tokyo's streets, perhaps because the garment is not appropriate for work. For the same reasons, we rarely meet Hanoian women wearing áo dài in the streets. Western women, who are generally less slender than the Vietnamese,love áo dà...