Basically there's nothing called Tai style. They just change depend on where they live due to influences of other groups. Eg. Lao and Thai dress like Mon and Khmer.

Different tastes. I really like the flow that skirts make.
Ao Dai pants flow too but the split in between kind of kills that flowy feeling for me. I wonder how that ao tu than above would look without the belt and a simpler headdress.

I guess Tai is diverse then I thought it would be. lols

áo dài flows better than áo tứ thân imo

Imagine the pants is replaced with the skirt. You won't get the same feeling.

Aodai with pants can do both two things: 1)outlining the lines on the girl's body and 2) creating a flowy floating feeling

Similarly with this. I think if you replace the pants with the skirt it won't look as good. The outlining of the girl's body would be gone and that flowy floating feeling may be gone too.

I have to agree. If you replace the pants with a skirt, then the dress would look weird. Especially, when it floats in the air.

The dress of ethnic Jing in China is a combination between Áo tư thân and áo dài.



ao tu than (peasant version)


ao dai



You can see that ethnic Jing dress got the upper part from ao tu than and the pants from aodai.

Hmm it think it depends.
Ao Dai looks better from a modern perspective of dress. That sensual flow revealing everything etc.
We haven't seen any new styles of Au Tu than yet so we can't say the same. All we have are peasant versions. If they actually did the same promotion of Ao Tu than it'd be even more beautiful.

Here's an Ao Dai with a skirt but this skirt isn't like the traditional Vietnamese skirt. Wonder how it'll look with Ao Tu Than skirt.


Ao dai looks nice when you can't clearly see the split of the pants. When both sides flow into eachother and looks like a skirt I think it looks nice.

It pretty much looks like they're wearing skirts most of the time:

That's when it looks nice to me. When you can clearly see the gap between the legs it just feel less flowy.

Your photos of flowy ao dai makes the pants look like skirts too.


It's all material. Some ao dai is made with thin material like that white one which makes it look really flowy but thicker material doesn't give the same effect.

which is why Vietnamese don't prefer tough materials like Lao and Khmer. We prefer the materials to be soft so our aodai can flow

Chinese qipao doesn't flow partly because the slits are too low, partly because of the materials.

umm so flowy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGE9JFQMig0

Thats a really good comparison u know, comparing modern ao dai with non-modern qipao. I thought u r more knowledgeable than tat Xigon. Or is that what we call biasness?

"In 1744, Lord Vu Vuong of the Nguyen Dynasty was assigned to revise the dress of Vietnamese ladies. He was the one who made the first design of the ao dai under certain influences of Muong patterns and Chinese versions."
http://www.eng.hochiminhcity.gov.vn/eng/ne...mp;news_id=2488

Seem like the ao dai is a blend between Muong and chinese influence.

Nguyen Vu Vuong decided to do some thing to please his new master, so he forbidded his people to wear skirt and forced them to wear Ao dai.
Compare Ao dai with manju Qipao


I do not think they are very different. Both wear pants inside.

Modern time Qipao was invented during last century.Obviously it has strong western influence, and it was later welcomed by chinese feminists. So it is short/tight, make ladies look sexy, very different from any tradditional chinese clothes.
Do not know why xigon compare Aodai with modern time Qipao? That's two different kinds of things.

fu-k i only got 1 hour of sleep............... feel like $hit

Very beautiful. The traditional outfits are amazing.

tianya and sinster, aodao did got some influence from qipao such as the collar but it didn't derived from qipao. Look at the dress of your ethnic Jing in China, still pretty similar to aodai. And the Jing migrated to China in the 14th century.








Two key features: the slits at the waist and the flowly flaps are still there. Differences are the collar and the flaps. Lord Nguyen Vu Vuong turned the four flaps into two flaps by moving the button line to the side, but at that time ao dai didn't have that "qipao collar". The qipao collar only developed in the 20th century under the influence of China, yes. But today there are many types of collar for aodai, it doesn't have to be the qipao-type collar, like this dress




For references, these are collar types for aodai in the past. Notice that qipao collar came along pretty late

No collar


low ao tu than collar




Qipao collar - This is in the 1960s



Today when designing old-type aodai, designers still make it collarless or low collar



Also for references, this is how ao tu than looked when it got turned from four flaps to two flaps (this happened in the North before Lord Nguyen Vu Vuong) but with the skirt unchanged



Notice the collar in the two pictures above are pretty similar to the ones in these pictures





What changed was the skirt and the sash. They replaced skirt with pants and took away the sash.


P/S: an advice to tianya - you should stop talking in a condescending tone if you want to earn respect from people.

LOL Did AF keep you awake?


Thanks.

No.. I was laying on my bed and couldn't sleep...
I think it's cause I drank a iced cappuccino before i slept...caffeine in my body

How come Jing wear pants instead of skirts? They didn't get affected by the ban if they were in China.

Did they get influenced by the Ao dai somehow?


They claimed that they came to China since 14th century but their clothes look more closer to modern Vietnamese Ao Dai then to the more original clothing.
The only thing different is they still wear the four flapped outer jacket/shirt with no collar like some northerners but they're wearing pants instead of skirts
which is weird.

The modern aodai is an influence from Vietnam.

But for the four-flapped dress with pants, no. Jing in China are mostly fishermen. They must have switched from skirt to pants for the convenience of their way of living.

How come Viet Ao Dai looking like a modern pajamas?

http://siamtradingpost.com/cubecart/images...i-yellow-pj.jpg



http://www.exoticindiaart.com/kurtapajamas...pajama_vp17.jpg

Viet Dress > Lao Dress
Don't be jealous of our dress.

Yeah I was thinking either that or when they adopted the Ao Dai, they took the idea of pants and switched out the skirts from the one with four flaps.
I've seen that four flapped dress before in some Quan Ho videos but they were wearing skirts. So it must be one of the reason above, influence from Ao Dai, or switched for convenience.

And Lao dress like monks?

Beautiful pictures. Quick question, are Muong similar to Thuong people?

Not really. Thượng often refers to the people in Central Vietnam highland. Muong people are from Northern Vietnam.

Technically all mountain minorities in Vietnam can be referred to as Thuong, but it doesn't mean they are the same. Thượng just means highland people in general. It's not ethnic-specific.

We are a buddhist believer afterall.

For reference, this was how court Northern Viet dress, áo tứ thân, looked like before switching to pants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClW3GwFrQjI <--- this vid provides the best example






The Jing in China obviously replaced the skirts with pants to get this





Back in Vietnam, they turned two flaps in the front to one flap by moving button line to the side and got this





Finally in Vietnam the skirt also got replaced with the pants. The sash was removed and you got this








With some qipao influence and you got this

I wonder if the Jing speak old vietnamese...

They have been in china for over 600 years. They pretty much lost. I am pretty sure they speak cantonese now.

They speak a mix of Viet and Cantonese. When I listen to some of their folk songs, I can still understand.

do u guys think this girl is a jing too ???

Very likely to be.

if she is then i wonder how they keep their viet roots so well like that .... if we find out their secret then we can help takumi finding his roots

OUCH! LMAO

More Muong Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_72aQxg90wU...feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDb78OAsaQs...feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkB3rwi-VUw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taTRF776tw8...feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrrZF329b-A...feature=related


More Kinh Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhbpZ4qAUh8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GWuUp_Ru_c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r2tG6llITo...feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy3icqR5oqI...feature=related
^thats the one that looks like Jing except with skirt instead of pants
that's probably how royal ao tu than looked. Is that a Muong in the middle? The dress looks really Muong, unless we still preserve dresses like that.

I noticed Muong skirts are tigher while Kinh is more loose. It's probably tighter due to Tai influences.

Oh interesting, do you have any link to their folk songs? I want to hear =D

Guys, it so nice to see the culture of your country by sharing those picture. Surely, there will be many tourist who will grab their back packs and fly there ..include me in the list...

Places you don't want to go in Vietnam


You've grabbed a ton... you've grabbed a grand... how about grabbing a million?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGUD3B-0feM

If you're not used to Northern Viet folk singing you may have more trouble hearing them.
Their singing is like Northern Viet mixed with Chinese.
Plus their Northern Viet might be ancient, you'll hear them pronounce the t as ts or ch sometimes. This is because majority of T in modern Vietnamese came from S/TS/Ch or one of those fricative sounds (Eg: tai < sai, tình < tsình/chình)


Here's the same folk song sung by Nhu Quynh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMZA5_yFZek

Here's another one sung by Ha Phuong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQecwYE8TG0

this is my favorite Muong song
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=L9lqj7...feature=related

That's the translated version. They're actually singing the Vietnamese version of it.

Why do they have people dress in Muong clothing during traditional Vietnamese music?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Binl3ll-3CU

@2:10 possibly royal Ao Tu Than. It's veerrry nice.

Anyone got any language clips?

I want to see how much I can understand Muong. lol

is she muong?

http://www.vtc.com.vn/view/9/61357/kham_ph...oi_muong.aspx#/
Discover Vietnam: Muong People's Home

http://www.vtc.com.vn/view/124/58414/noi_l...oa_muong.aspx#/
A Place Preserving Muong People's Cultural Atmosphere

The longest dynasty in Vietnam history was founded by a Muong

Muong and Viet are two of the same.

what dynasty?

The longest dynasty of Imperial Vietnam was Later Le Dynasty (1428–1788) which lasted for 360 years.


Ancient Vietnam Period (2879 BC to 257 BC)

Imperial Vietnam Period (257 BC to 1945 AD)

Modern Vietnam Period (1945 AD to Present)