With a series of events taking place at the end of June, Hue Community Ao Dai Week 2024 once again left a deep impression on domestic and international tourists. There, everyone could learn about the painstaking ao dai tailoring process or enjoy the bike parades around Hue City to promote the image of ao dai.

This was also an extremely impressive “meeting” between Ao dai Vietnam and Korean Hanbok, giving everyone an interesting insight into the “national costumes” of the two countries. Also, designers from famous traditional craft villages were motivated to bring the image of ao dai into the process of creating traditional crafts.

On this occasion, a large number of experts, researchers, and designers from many provinces and cities gathered in Hue. They came to this land with collections of ao dai, new ideas to further promote ao dai, and plans to develop the ao dai tailoring industry.

The Ao Dai Week has taken place for many years, and just like previous years, the organisers of the event once again aim not only to help people and tourists access and better understand ao dai, thereby cherishing and promoting the traditional ao dai – the “national costume” – in particular, but also contribute to fostering a love for the nation’s traditional cultural values as well. In addition, the event contributes to promoting culture, tourism, and socio-economic development of the locality and the country. 

Many attendees to this event more or less understood the value of the ao dai. Before the event, they thought of the traditional ao dai simply as a traditional long garment. As a result, they rarely paid attention to the stories, the historical values, as well as the ao dai tailoring process.

“I learned more about the birth of the traditional ao dai, the considerable effort involved in the painstaking ao dai tailoring process. Then, whenever I wear the traditional ao dai, I love it more and appreciate the values passed down by my ancestors,” confided Ms. Nguyen Thu Huyen, a tourist, when exploring the space where the tailoring experience took place during the event. 

Mr. Phan Thanh Hai, Director of the Department of Culture and Sports, said that in recent times, the province had made very strong moves in building a brand and creating conditions for ao dai products to develop. Other departments have also made great efforts in building the brand name “Hue – The Capital of Ao Dai Vietnam”, registering copyrights, logos, etc., thereby creating a very good brand basis for development.

Regarding the policies to create favourable conditions for the community, people, and businesses to develop and spread the image of ao dai, Mr. Hai said that he was researching and advising the provincial leaders to create better conditions in finding raw materials and training human resources, which is extremely important.

“This is the task of both preserving traditional crafts and developing products in a contemporary direction in order to meet the new requirements of all social classes, especially young people. Only then will ao dai be given new vitality and have the opportunity to develop, truly becoming not only a traditional cultural product that reflects the characteristics of Hue, but also an attractive product for tourists,” said Mr. Hai.

According to Mr. Hai, the most recent work has established terrific initial foundations. However, a lot still needs to be done to reach the goals set by the project “Hue – The Capital of Ao Dai Vietnam”. In particular, we must pay more attention to investing in resources, policy mechanisms and ways to organise good campaigns to help the public understand traditional cultural values, including the ao dai. In particular, Hue Community Ao Dai Week proves itself a very good effort when receiving the favourable response of the community and tourists.