(CLO) Deciding to recreate traditional costumes in the original style, the young man born in the 90s, Nguyen Duc Huy, has spent many years researching and studying to bring the purest aspects of Vietnamese traditional costumes closer to the public, especially young people.
Unexpected turn
Talking about the opportunity to come to the profession of restoring Vietnamese traditional costumes, Nguyen Duc Huy (born in 1994), founder of Dong Phong traditional costume brand, said that in 2015, while studying planning in Germany, the movement to restore traditional costumes in Vietnam began to develop.
The Ao Vien Linh costume was made by Dong Phong group. Photo: Dong Phong Fanpage
One day, by chance, he saw a project to restore traditional costumes carried out by young people and was very surprised to realize that Vietnam had so many beautiful costumes. That moment ignited his love for traditional Vietnamese costumes, from which he began to learn more and pay more attention to this field.
After finishing his third year of university, after some consideration, Duc Huy decided to stop studying his current major and switch to auditing East Asian Studies to study more systematically and learn about Vietnamese culture from a Western perspective.
In 2018, when he returned to Vietnam, he decided to join a company - which was also the first unit in Vietnam to make traditional costumes. However, due to different orientations, Duc Huy decided to leave the company and establish his own traditional costume brand, marking the first step in the journey of preserving and developing traditional cultural values.
First steps
Nguyen Duc Huy, founder of Dong Phong traditional costume brand - Photo: Dong Phong Fanpage
Born around April 2019, talking about the establishment of the Dong Phong brand, Duc Huy said: “Back in 2019, many of my friends wanted to sew traditional costumes but it was difficult to find suppliers and if there were, the cost of the costumes was too high. I myself also wanted to sew for my friends, and at the same time, I could help many young people have the opportunity to access Vietnamese traditional costumes, so I researched and tried to create traditional costumes at affordable prices.”
The early days of establishing the brand were extremely difficult for Duc Huy. At that time, the public's awareness of Vietnamese traditional costumes was still limited. He said that at one point, he focused on making Nguyen Dynasty costumes, but people confused them with opera costumes or medium costumes, not realizing that they were once popular costumes of a historical period.
Therefore, customers at that time were very rare and his team often had to provide information about the origin and meaning of each costume to help people understand and appreciate more the cultural value that Vietnamese traditional costumes bring.
Besides, because he was new to the profession, his knowledge of history, culture and restoration techniques was still limited, so he often had to learn while working. However, these difficulties became the motivation, urging the young man to constantly strive to learn to improve himself and his products.
Private path
Besides using industrial fabrics to make clothes, Nguyen Duc Huy also researches natural fabric dyeing - Photo: Dong Phong Fanpage
In recent years, Vietnamese traditional costumes have increasingly received the attention of young people, becoming a source of inspiration for many people to research and design. Faced with such strong development, the 9X guy realized the need to create a difference to highlight the value of the product. Instead of focusing only on style or pattern, he decided to change direction, focusing on researching and improving fabric materials.
To realize this idea, Duc Huy did not use imported fabrics but hoped that Vietnamese costumes would use domestically produced materials. He spent a lot of time traveling to traditional weaving villages from North to South such as Van Phuc, La Khe, Nam Cao, Ma Chau to find the most suitable fabrics to use in traditional costumes. The 9X guy believes that improving fabric quality not only meets aesthetic needs but also contributes to honoring Vietnamese cultural values in each product.
As a young man interested in sustainable living, Duc Huy wants to combine traditional costumes with sustainable fashion, bringing natural materials into the products. He believes that this will not only help people get acquainted with environmentally friendly fabrics, but also, the traditional costumes he creates will be of high quality and long-lasting. This is also the initial goal he pursued when embarking on this journey.
After a period of research, Duc Huy realized that natural fabric dyeing also helped him in understanding the colors of ancient costumes. When researching ancient costumes, he encountered difficulties because he did not have direct artifacts, but only relied on pictures or a few written documents. However, the description of colors in ancient documents was often unclear, because the names of colors in the past were different from today, making visualization even more difficult.
After finding some documents recording ancient fabric dyeing materials, he also went to mountainous areas to learn more about manual fabric dyeing techniques from ethnic minorities. From the knowledge he gathered, Duc Huy began to practice dyeing raw silk, cooked silk, and linen with materials such as Indian almond leaves, yellow vine, ant nests, brown tubers, pomegranate peels, etc.
Through the process of experimentation, he gradually discovered the color shades that often appeared on ancient costumes, partly shedding light on how our ancestors selected and colored their costumes.
Products from Hoang Dang combined with Indigo. Photo: Dong Phong Fanpage
Desire to spread traditional culture
Not only appearing in movies, music or mass media, Vietnamese traditional costumes are now increasingly chosen by many young people on special occasions such as weddings, graduation ceremonies and most recently in the movement of wearing Vietnamese traditional costumes to participate in the concert "Anh Trai Vuot Ngan Chong Gai".
“When I first started pursuing this path, almost no one knew what this was. I thought it would take a long time for traditional costumes to be widely accepted. But I didn’t expect that after only a few years, Vietnamese traditional costumes would be so loved and cared for by so many young people. That’s what makes me really happy,” Huy shared.
To promote and bring the image of Vietnamese traditional costumes to the public, he and the Dong Phong team regularly share and introduce naturally dyed fabrics and traditional costumes created by the group on social networking platforms.
At the same time, Dong Phong group also participates in and organizes many projects and exhibition activities to help people have the opportunity to come into contact with traditional materials as well as natural dyeing materials and experience natural dyeing...
Through cultural events, Dong Phong has brought Vietnamese traditional costumes closer to the public. Photo: Dong Phong Fanpage
Depending on the style and fabric, Dong Phong's traditional costumes range in price from about 1 to 8 million VND. When asked why he devotes so much effort to traditional costumes even though the profits are not large, Mr. Huy sincerely confided that he does not put much emphasis on business, but is currently "living well" with the profession and is enough to continue pursuing his passion.
“Traditional costumes is a field that I think needs people to do, there are many things that need everyone to contribute. I think I have the ability so I will contribute, if I can still make a living with this profession, I will continue to do it…”, Nguyen Duc Huy confided.
Thu Huyen
Source: https://www.congluan.vn/ngon-gio-dong-khac-biet-giua-lan-song-van-hoa-co-phuc-viet-nam-post327966.html
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