“I made these clothes with­in 3 months. It is extreme­ly hard to make them. We have to dye the cloth until the col­or does­n’t change when we wash them. If I don’t go to work, and just stay at home to sew the clothes, it would take me 3 days to fin­ish sewing them.” (Not includ­ing weav­ing and dying the fabric.)

Chốc lives in a small tra­di­tion­al vil­lage of the Giay eth­nic group. It sits perched on the side of a lush val­ley carved with rice ter­races in a remote area of North­ern Vietnam.

Being fas­ci­nat­ed with the hand­made nature of their tra­di­tion­al clothes a man in the vil­lage explained more about them to Trinh and me: “We weave the cloth, it’s hand­made. It takes a long time to die the cloth. If you don’t dye it care­ful­ly, the col­or will fade. We have to dye the cloth until we wash it and don’t see the col­or change any more. We use indi­go to dye. Lots of work. If we buy cloth, it is expen­sive. But if we sell the cloth at a cheap price then it will be not fair for the amount of work and time we spend on mak­ing it. That is why most of us just made the cloth on our own.”

“Young peo­ple like wear­ing the clothes that they sell at the mar­ket (nor­mal clothes). They can wear tra­di­tion­al clothes if they want, but to them, it is a lit­tle bit hot.”

Chốc, 45 years old
Giáy Eth­nic Group
Ha Giang, Vietnam