Vietnam is a beautiful country. I really liked the people. I saw this picture this morning of young women in their Ao dai’s. A friend had sent me a link to a site about the Vietnam War and Vietnamese words and American slang we all used while there. I always thought the Ao dai was a beautiful piece of clothing. It’s a piece of dressier clothing. In bigger towns and cities, you would see women wearing them but far less dressy than the ones in the photo. The most popular ones seemed to be all white. The Ao dai always had a very tight bodice and a skirt that was split all the way to the waist. It also had a Mandarin collar. Underneath there would be slacks that were always very loose and often seemed to touch the ground particularly in fancy Ao dai’s. Also in the fancy ones, the slacks would be made of silk. As you can see from the picture, sometimes they were in a contrasting color to the other parts of the costume. The choice seems to be up to the woman who was wearing the Ao dai. Older women told me before the slacks had an elastic waistband there had been some sort of suspender type system to keep them up. My Vietnamese did not include words for parts of women’s clothing and bodily functions. It seemed to me that suspenders and the very tight top to the costume would have made it very difficult for a woman to go to the bathroom. I could see possible solutions, but was never able to confirm any one of them thanks to my lack of Vietnamese vocabulary.
I thought you would enjoy the beauty of the Ao dai. They are very beautiful! If you’d like to see more pictures of them go to Google and search for “images for the Ao dai.” There are pictures of the more common all white Ao dai and many more of the wide range of beautiful fancy Ao dai’s.
