LookAtVietnam – Three years is a long time to spend filming a documentary on “Vietnamese Costumes” but not when you consider it features 4,000 outfits.

Director Nguyen Hai Anh.

Hello Hai Anh, whose idea was the documentary?

I thought of it when I was a student at the Leningrad Academy for Stage, Movies and Music (former USSR). At that time, we often had weekend parties at our dormitory and foreign students like me showed off our unique traditional costumes.

When I studied arts for five years at the Hermitage Museum, I had a chance to admire the beauty of European noblewomen in paintings but questions about Vietnamese costumes urged me further.

Nearly 20 years later, the documentary based on my script and directed by myself is the answer for myself and for the people who have the passion for ancient art of Vietnam.

With a small film crew, who traveled in Vietnam and abroad you faced many difficulties but also received a great deal of help.

I would like to tell you of one of many memories. Once we travelled 400km from Hanoi to a relic of the later Le dynasty in Thanh Hoa province. We arrived in Thanh Hoa at noon, when the temperature was 40oC. We couldn’t see the relic and we didn’t know how to find it. Suddenly, an old man appeared. He told us that the relic was destroyed but he voluntarily led us to another which also had many stone statues and objects related to the later Le dynasty.

Without such people, we couldn’t pursue our project.

The story about Vietnamese costumes starts with the clothes of the Hung King dynasty to the modern time?

I noticed the clothes of Vietnamese ordinary people have not changed a lot. But costumes of the feudal court changed clearly through dynasties.

Costumes are the culture of a nation. Vietnamese people have experienced many wars and historical developments but Vietnamese people’s clothes remained very special.

The film crew visited many foreign museums to seek answers on Vietnamese ancient costumes. What did you find?

We went to the Babier Muller Museum in Geneva, Switzerland, the Austrian Ethnology Museum in Vienna, the Guimet Museum in France, the Museum of Weaving History in Lyon, France, the Belgium Art and History Museum and museums in China.

We are very glad to see that Vietnamese ancient costumes are preserved very carefully by these experts.

Actually, Vietnamese ancient costumes displayed at foreign museums helped us a lot. The collection of royal costumes of the Nguyen dynasty owned by Pham Lan Huong in Avignon, France is a fine example of overseas preservation. Many private museums of overseas Vietnamese also enthusiastically assisted our film crew.

What do you think about a museum of Vietnamese clothes?

The world’s largest museum of cloth and costumes is in Lyon, France. With 3-4 million samples of cloth and costumes, visitors can admire the beauty of Egyptian jackets from 2000 years BC. There’s also leather and feather coats of Mongolian nomadic people and costumes of European aristocrats of the 15-16^th centuries.

It is regrettable that wonderful samples of Dong Son cloths that we saw in Vietnam are not there to support the collection on the weaving industry.

The Vietnam Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex) plans to build a museum of the garment and textile sectors I hope that we will have a true museum of Vietnamese costumes.

A gown of the Nguyen Dynasty (in the collection of Pham Lan Phuong, France)

The costume of a princess in the Mac dynasty.

The costume of a Queen.

The costume of King Quang Trung.

VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre