Vietnamese clothing

Cloth and materials

Vietnam's textiles go back a long way. Silk was made and worn in the north. Elsewhere people used barkcloth and cloth spun from banana fibre, and kapok and hemp were common long before cotton arrived. Rank showed in the fabric: the elite wore silk, coloured and decorated, while ordinary people had plain hemp clothing. In the north, Tai nobles who arrived in the Đông Sơn era became dominant, and the Mon-Khmer and Kra-dai peoples already living there took up Tai dress.

Everyday wear

For centuries countrywomen put on a halter top, the yếm, under a blouse or an overcoat, with a skirt below it. In remote hamlets of the north, skirts were still worn in the 1920s. A round-necked robe cut from four pieces of cloth, buttoned, was worn by men and women alike, and the long-flapped áo tràng vạt, tied to the right, was common before the Nguyễn dynasty. Most men, and men of minority peoples as well, came to wear Chinese-style trousers and shirts. Garments known as áo end below the knee.

Court dress

Court clothing followed Chinese rules for centuries, and officials in the north dressed to those regulations. In 1437, on the advice of Lương Đăng, Emperor Lê Thái Tông wore the gunmian, a ceremonial robe and cap, for the sacrifice to Heaven, the announcement at the ancestral temple, his birthday and New Year. For ordinary audiences he wore a yellow robe and the xung thiên crown, a futou hat whose two wings turned upward. Nguyễn dynasty officials wore formal dress at the sacrifice to Heaven and Earth. The Lịch triều hiến chương loại chí records these rules.

Hair, teeth and edicts

Short hair, or a shaved head, was usual for men from ancient times, and Emperor Trần Nhân Tông and his men are shown that way in a surviving painting. A Chinese encyclopedia of the 17th century, the Sancai Tuhui, records the same. Teeth blackening was a long-standing custom. When the Ming held Vietnam in the early 15th century, they ordered men to let their hair grow and to wear Chinese clothing within a month, and told women to dress in Chinese style. A royal edict of 1474, set down in Ngô Sĩ Liên's chronicle, banned foreign languages, hairstyles and clothes.

Influence and variety

Chinese aesthetics shaped Vietnamese dress both in ordinary fashion and at court, the strongest single thread in its history. Other strands came from elsewhere: Tai styles in the far past, Cham elements from the south, and Western fashions that arrived with French colonial rule. Lê dynasty scholars argued that Vietnamese clothing set the country apart from its neighbours, and an edict of 1474 backed them. Vietnam holds many ethnic groups, and dress has long shown which community a person belongs to. Today the áo dài, made mainly for women, is the best-known form.

When and where

Vietnamese dress has no one date. Court life tied it to the calendar: the emperor wore full ceremonial robes for the sacrifice to Heaven, the ancestral temple announcement, his birthday and New Year, and a yellow robe with the xung thiên crown for audiences on the first and fifteenth day of each month.

Vietnam is home to it. The northern lowlands, under Chinese rule for a thousand years, took in the heaviest Chinese influence; the centre and south, once part of the Indian-influenced kingdom of Champa, looked elsewhere. Dress also differs between ethnic groups, so there is no single local style.

What Vietnamese clothing means

Dress in Vietnam has long carried meaning about who you are and where you belong, marking rank in silk or hemp and marking a people against its neighbours. In the 15th century the scholar Nguyễn Trãi taught that adopting the language or clothing of the Ming, Champa, Laos, Siam or Cambodia would bring disorder to Vietnamese customs, and an edict of 1474 echoed him. Keeping local dress was a way of keeping local custom.

Questions people ask about Vietnamese clothing

See also

DiyiA formal ceremonial robe worn by empresses and royal women in China, Korea, and Vietnam.Dragon robeRobes embroidered with dragons, worn by Chinese emperors and copied by nearby courtsMianfuThe most formal dress of China's emperors, worn at coronations and court ritesBon Om ToukA three-day Cambodian festival of dragon boat races, floating lanterns and moon offerings

Good reading and sources

• Vietnamese clothing on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-14.