Page 276 - Trang Phục Việt Nam

Children’s garments
Three or four year old boys wore short cánh shirts fastened with a cord tied at the waist side.
They wore dungarees which were kept in place with two cords secured at the nape of the neck
and two tied at the back. The crotch was often split. Little girls wore a skirt with an extra piece
of cloth covering the chest. The skirt also had a cord like boys’ dungarees. The kids could
wear only pants or skirts with an extra piece of cloth covering the belly and the chest in the
summer.
Little boys had three patches of hair on the head: two on the sides and one on the crown.
Little girls had two patches of hair with one from the crown down to the forehead, and the other
extending to the nape of the neck.

Children wore bracelets, anklets, necklaces, a silver khánh which was a kind of necklace
with a musical stone engraved with character mệnh (fate) or trường sinh bản mệnh (health
and longevity). A tiger’s claw could be added to the necklace as ornament and to drive away
ghosts and devils. At the age of seven or eight, girls began to wear bras, áo cánh shirts and
four-panel long dresses in brown or black, kept in place with a waistband hanging down in
front. They wore dark colored skirts or pants. They wore square headscarves. In winter, they
wore shirts made of coarse fabric with open collars and fastened with two laces. They wore
leather or wooden shoes. They also wore silver earrings.
Seven or eight-year-old boys wore áo cánh shirts and black shorts. When going out, they
wore dark colored or white gauze tunics. They had short hair covered with turbans. They wore
wooden shoes or walked in bare feet. Some boys tried Gia Định shoes. Many boys, mainly in
poor families still retained three patches of hair on their head.

In cities, girls of wealthy families often wore a long dress made of silk, brocade or satin in
different colors and buttoned under the arm. Their pants were typically white. They wore
wooden shoes with horizontal straps or shoes inlaid with beads. They let their hair grow and
tied it neatly at the back. They could also arrange their hair in Japanese style with fringes
hanging over the forehead, level sideburns and level locks of hair at the back. They used a
comb to secure the forelock or wore a narrow strip of cloth around the head to prevent the
sideburns from hanging over the face. Their jewelry included earrings, gold necklaces,
bracelets and gold lập lắc (plaque). Boys in the city were dressed in garments of the same
type as those in the country but the fabrics were of higher quality. Few boys wore clothes of
Western style.
After the August revolution Women’s costumes
In the anti-French resistance war, costumes of women in the country were subject to many
changes to suit their daily life in which work and fighting against the enemy were combined.
They were dressed neatly in brown áo cánh shirts with round or heart-shaped neck,
sleeveless undershirts, black pants made of batiste or glossy cloth. They wound kerchiefs
around the head. Government officials wore shirts with straight sleeves, swallow wing collars
in blue, cement gray khaki or warm pink. They wrapped headscarves or wore their hair in a