After more than a decade of maintenance and development, the Ho Chi Minh City Ao Dai Festival has affirmed its role as a series of cultural and artistic activities of practical significance in preserving and promoting the traditional values of national costumes and honoring Vietnamese Ao Dai in modern life.
In the 12-year journey of organizing and spreading the value of Ao Dai, this year's Ho Chi Minh City Ao Dai Festival with the theme "Golden Silk - Weaving Aspiration" continues to emphasize the role of Ao Dai as a string connecting tradition with the aspiration for development in contemporary life. In that flow, designer Do Trinh Hoai Nam is considered one of the pioneering designers to bring cultural heritage to Ao Dai, contributing to telling the story of Vietnamese culture through fashion language.
In this year's festival season, designer Do Trinh Hoai Nam brought the collection "Vietnam Brocade Flowers - Northern Heritage" including 10 designs, inspired by typical heritage symbols of the North such as Bat Trang, Hoan Kiem Lake, Vietnamese water puppetry, Trang An scenic complex, Dong Ho paintings, Temple of Literature - Quoc Tu Giam... Through this, the collection contributes to completing the "golden thread" of the S-shaped letter at the 2026 Ho Chi Minh City Ao Dai Festival, where regional cultural values are connected in a contemporary Vietnamese ao dai picture.
Inspired by the stone joining technique of craftsmen in Yen Bai, the highlight of the collection lies in the skillful handmade embroidery technique.
Behind each design is the enthusiasm and effort of hundreds of artisans from traditional craft villages, who have put all their skills and love for the craft into each needle and thread with the desire to bring Vietnamese handicraft techniques to the world. Each design is a introduction to tourism and Northern heritage, conveying the quintessence of craft villages and Vietnamese cultural identity through fashion language, in the common thread of honoring the tradition of the 2026 Ho Chi Minh City Ao Dai Festival.
The Ho Chi Minh City Ao Dai Festival, through many years of organization, has become a cultural promotion activity of a wider scale. Through the ao dai, traditional values, heritage and image of the country are introduced to the public at home and abroad, contributing to positioning the ao dai as a cultural symbol of Vietnam in contemporary life and the integration process.
