Page 254 - Trang Phục Việt Nam

Summary in English

Throughout the world, people’s style of dress is influenced by the climate. Vietnam is
generally humid, but since the country stretches over a distance of about 1,500 km north to
south, there is significant variation in the weather. Northern Vietnam experiences four relatively
distinctive seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Southern Vietnam on the other
hand, rarely experiences cold weather, only having two seasons, wet and dry. Of course, there
are also other factors that have an important effect. Vietnam is a country of high mountains
and dense forests, long rivers and large seas, vast fertile plains. These geographical features
result in a diversity in the costumes of Vietnamese people in each region.
Although the Viet people form the majority of the population, there are many ethnic groups in
Vietnam. This contributes to the wide variety of costumes worn in the country in the modern
age. However, Vietnam has an ancient civilization. Recently excavated bronze and stone
artifacts and shards of pottery, lying deep underground for thousands of years have proved the
existence of ancient civilizations. They provide the answers to many of our questions about
bygone times, including the question about the costumes of our ancestors.
The period of the Hùng Kings
Three thousands five hundred years ago, Vietnam had an outstanding Bronze Age culture.
The country was called Văn Lang. People lived on hunting, gathering, and cultivating plants
such as rice, sweet potatoes, and fruit-trees. They no longer used tree bark to make clothing,
but knew how to grow hemp and jute and weave fabrics. They also raised silkworms to make
fine silk cloth. Their daily activities were depicted on bronze drums and in statues and carvings
discovered by archaeologists. People are depicted in stylized form wearing the costumes of
the time. For instance, the top of some of the bronze drums unearthed show the figure of a
man carrying another on his back; there are human shapes on urns, the statue of a man
playing the khèn (pan-pipe). All of these give some idea of the clothes worn at the time.
Female figures carved on sword and dagger handles show that women wore adornments,
chignons, and turbans round their heads.
Thus, according to the evidence, there was a great diversity in our ancestors’ costumes.
Women wore a close fitting shirt to the waist, open at the neck, with a bra supported from the
neck as undergarment, decorated with a dotted rice grain pattern. There were also short
blouses with squared necks, uncovering part of the shoulder and chest, or covering the chest
but still showing part of the shoulder and back. These blouses could be worn over the head or
buttoned on the left. There were designs on the shirts and blouses. A belt was worn with three
equidistantly patterned lines of dots, tied around the waist and accentuating the curves of the
female torso. The two tasseled ends of the belt were allowed to hang at the front and back.
The closed skirt clung to the body and was decorated with patterns of round dots, parallel
diagonals, and two circles with dots in the middle.

From the archaeological artifacts found, it can be concluded that women often wore two
kinds of skirt: a closed skirt (drawn over the head or stepped into), made with the two edges of
a cloth sewn in a tubular form; and an open skirt (wrapped around the body), with a cloth sash