Fashion designers predict that simple and relaxing clothes in neutral color will be the fashion trend in Vietnam this year.

An ao dai from Ngo Nhat Huy’s Spring-Summer collection

Office workers will prefer simple, relaxing and convenient designs in mild colors, he said.

“Women workers may choose short dresses that do not cling to their bodies, and attach a belt when going to parties,” he said.

“Easy-to-use materials like silk and cotton will continue to be loved. Chocolate, purple, yellow, navy blue, and mixed colors will be popular,” he predicted.

An ao dai from Ngo Nhat Huy’s Spring-Summer collection

Renowned designer Ngo Thai Uyen concurred saying simple, loose clothes would be in favor this year.

“Popular foreign brands are driving Vietnamese fashion trends,” Uyen said. “Vietnamese are gradually having more opportunities to use foreign-designed clothes and they like these clothes. That’s why local designers follow foreign trends.”

For street wear, many people would choose Alibaba pants and shirts this year, designer Ngo Nhat Huy said.

As for the ao dai (the traditional Vietnamese dress), Huy said net and lace would dominate, adding natural fiber would replace synthetic fiber.

“My Spring-Summer ao dai collection will have some innovations: the dress won’t have sleeves and reveal the neck. It can replace evening gowns but still be attractive,” he said.

As for evening gowns, neutral colors and crystals would be popular, he added.

But designer Hoang Hai did not agree with his three colleagues.

He said clothes showing strong characteristics would dominate local and international catwalks this year.

“Bare shoulder dresses will appear less. Capped and long sleeve dresses and one-shoulder flutter-sleeve dresses will replace them,” he said.

Globally, hemlines are headed way up in spring 2010 fashions, Reuters said, reporting on fashions in New York where top designers gathered for a semi-annual array of shows.

“I’ve never seen so much leg in my life,” the news agency quoted designer Stan Herman, former head of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, as saying.

“I wonder if everybody wants to save fabric.”

Among the most prevalent were bandage mini skirts – tightly wound strips of fabric – by designers Tadashi Shoji, Yigal Azrouel, Cynthia Steffe, and Monarchy. Herve Leger by Max Azria created bandage dresses of denim.

Other minis had flounce and flare, such as skirts by Michael Angel and dresses by Adam Lippes.

VietNamNet/TN