Ho Chi Minh City (VNA) – The timeless elegance of the “Ao Dai" (Vietnam’s traditional long dress) took centre stage at a major cultural showcase in Ho Chi Minh City, as designers and artists came together to celebrate the dress’s enduring role as a symbol of national identity.
Held on March 7 along Nguyen Hue pedestrian street, the “Ao Dai with Life” art programme - Vietnam Beauty Fashion Fest XIV - formed part of the 12th Ho Chi Minh City Ao Dai Festival. The event reaffirmed the tunic-style dress not only as a fashion statement but as a living embodiment of Vietnam’s cultural heritage.
Under the theme “Green,” the programme unfolded across four distinct showcases - Green Elegance, Green Creativity, Green Woodblock, and Green Heritage, featuring collections by designers Trung Dinh, Dang Trong Minh Chau, the duo Song Toan (Pham Si Toan and Huynh Bao Toan), Nguyen Viet Hung and others.
Silk legacy shines on the runway
Opening the night, designer Trung Dinh presented “Golden Era and Aspiration,” a collection crafted from silk, long regarded as a “national treasure” of Vietnamese textile art. The designs highlighted the fluidity and natural luminosity of high-quality silk, while preserving traditional tailoring and hand-dyeing techniques.
The collection paid tribute to Vietnam’s rich silk heritage while conveying a contemporary ambition to sustain and elevate traditional craftsmanship. The runway featured prominent beauty queens, including Le Hoang Phuong and Doan Thien An, alongside festival ambassadors Huynh Thi Thanh Thuy and Tran Tieu Vy.
Sustainability emerged as a defining thread in the collection “Thom” by Song Toan, which utilised pineapple fibre transformed through intricate processes into durable, eco-friendly fabric. Inspired by bamboo, the designs featured minimalist vertical lines and stylised leaf motifs, symbolising resilience and quiet strength. A palette ranging from smoky grey to deep green, accented with traditional hues of yellow and white, created a refined yet grounded aesthetic.
Rural heritage meets contemporary design
Designer Dang Trong Minh Chau’s “Det mong” (Weaving Dreams) brought audiences to the Vietnamese countryside, reimagining familiar images such as thatched roofs, cracked earth, and dried straw through layered textures and natural materials like jute. Earthy tones - straw yellow, muted beige, and deep terracotta -balanced softness and rawness, evoking a serene yet powerful visual language rooted in rural memory.
The collection also reinterpreted the traditional khan dong headpiece, adding a nostalgic cultural dimension. The showcase featured leading figures, including Nguyen Tran Khanh Van and Que Anh.
Meanwhile, designer Nguyen Viet Hung, in collaboration with Thai Tuan silk, drew inspiration from traditional “tu binh” (four-panel) paintings in his collection “Tu Binh Phong Hoa.”
Motifs such as apricot, orchid, chrysanthemum, and bamboo, alongside pastoral scenes of fishing, woodcutting, farming, and herding, were rendered on soft silk, creating a poetic fusion of nature, humanity, and everyday life. Symbolic imagery, like galloping horses in clouds, added a sense of vitality and forward aspiration.
The programme concluded with a special “Green” collection, bringing together 29 designers and their muses in a vibrant finale that underscored both diversity and unity in contemporary Ao Dai design.
The event not only celebrated the aesthetic grace of the Ao Dai across all four showcases, but also invited audiences to reflect on the depth and continuity of Vietnam’s cultural identity – where tradition is preserved, reinterpreted, and carried forward into modern life./.
