Vietnamese ao dai... blog #3

Last weekend my mother attended a typical Vietnamese wedding and wore a fushia and purple "ao dai," the traditional Vietnamese dress, that she purchased in Vietnam a few years ago. I've always looked at the ao dai as being the same as other ao dais that I see other ladies wear. But since taking this fashion class, it made me wonder what would an "authentic" ao dai be like. Is there are different cut? Would the colors be more demure? And finally, the ao dai that my mother is wearing, is it a more fashionable version that is catered to Viet Kieu tastes due to the revival of the ao dai in the 1990s (Ao Dai Revival, Valverde)? Other questions come in mind also, such as who designed it, where is the fabric from, and etc. As we live in the age of globalization and commodity culture (Tracing Transnationalities, Dwyer), one can never be sure which networks of production a garment has been through to become what one would purchase as the final product. Clothes in my eyes can never be seen as simply as before.