Vietnamese Ao Dai, the unrecognize beauty

The Vietnamese cultures and beauties are always bring under-represent into the mainstream culture despite how hard we tried to break across that line.

The beauty of the Vietnamese Ao Dai are more than just a piece of simple garments nowadays. It is no longer just that simple white dress but it becomes much more elaborated.

In the articles "An analysis of modern fashion designs as influenced by Asian ethnic dress," written by Yu,Kim, Lee, and Hong, they perhaps did not give enough credits or that they did not went through enough research toward the characteristics of the Vietnamese dress. The Ao Dai usually associated with a round hat, not straw hat. That is the most worn accessories along with Ao Dai and with a high wooden shoes. The Ao Ba Ba, which is a evolve version of Ao Dai, usually worn by farmers. Because the Ao Dai is too long for them to do the farm works, they have to roll up the Ao Dai and eventually becomes Ao Ba Ba. Straw hat usually associated with Ao Ba Ba because the farmers needed big hat to wear to endure the hot summer sun while they are on the rice field.

Ao Dai today is much much more complex from the pattern, motifs, to the seam lines. They have more and more version of Ao Dai such as the Wedding Ao Dai, Formal Ao Dai, and the simple White Ao Dai, which commonly worn by students. The Formal Ao Dai, along with the inspiration from both Eastern and Western, they now become much more ever so complicated dresses. If you want to see more you may want to go to Thuy Nga Shops and looks at the desinger Ao Dai by Calvin Hiep or Thai Nguyen Design by Thai Nguyen. They are the new generation of Ao Dai and I must say, Ao Dai soon will be going into mainstream fashion if it have a chance to be recognize by the world and people can look pass the race issues to see the beauty of my culture, Vietnamese culture.

A little up date on my project:

It is a pain not be able to shop. My friends kept asking me to go shopping and go out and eat. But window shopping is totally not helping. Agh....I always go shop, pick up the clothes and then...remembering these project. I have to bite my lips, hold back the tears and put back the items knowing that soon they will be on someone else's body...hic..hic...

I also replace all the lights in my apartment to reduce the use of energy. The only thing that I am so not good at is the long shower. I love long shower and I cannot just shower for 5 minutes...sigh...

O and I am still using water bottles. After i finish this case, I will reuse the bottles, wash it, and refill it with the refillable water tanks :D Smart move right

still 8 more weeks of slow poison...but I will save up lots of money to travel! VACATION I WILL COME TO YOU!

lol

Tu's out

Tu Le
Blog #3

P.S. I have to buy my cousin present for his 18th Birthday so this does not count!

Citation

Yu, Haekyung L., Chanju Kim, Juhyeon Lee, and Nayoung Hong. "An analysis of modern fashion designs as unfluenced by Asian ethnic dress." International Journal of Consumer Studies. 25.4 (2001): 309-321. Print.

Image 1:http://www.dancewithshadows.com/pageants/dayana-mendoza-miss-universe-venezuela-2008/

Image 2:http://my.opera.com/escapervn/blog/2008/06/23/ao-dai-vietnam-is-one-of-top-ten-traditional-custom-in-miss-universe