Traditional Customers are one of the aspects that and an important component in building up the lifestyle of a region and nation. Through clothing we know the living standard and life of people in different development stages of nation. And also through clothing we can see clearly that there were big gaps between the rich and poor in early societies. For that reason, it is impossible to ignore the special, high class in past society. Hue’s royal costumes are a good example as we study the life of our society, and in particular the Nguyen Dynasty of Hue city.
Located on the north bank of the romantic Huong River (Perfume River), Hue City, was formed with the purposes of a being a breakaway nation and ruling over a region of Nguyen Lords from 1558, and then officially became one of our capital cities under the Tayson – Nguyen Dynasties. With a 300 – year history, Hue has restored a variety of famous national cultural heritages. There are palaces, splendid tombs of the Nguyen pagodas together with the natural – gifted legacies, the Huong river, Ngu mountain making Hue indeed poetic land, rich in national cultural heritage Among the special cultural heritages, Hue’s royal costumes play an important role, contributing a significant in sketching the picture of our country under the Nguyen Dynasty.
Hue’s royal costume that continues to be worn to this day is quite varied including the costume of the King, Queen mother, crown prince, princes, and eldest princes, administrative and military mandarins in the court. They are unsurpassable works of art made in accordance with the criteria of the Ministry of Rites, by the hands of talented arties. The royal costume including clothes for attending great royal occasions, routine royal occasions, royal rituals and the daily clothes worn by simple folk are all costly connected to each specific part of the complicated life of dynasty? Almost all of these dresses were made of high quality materials. According to the records, in the times of Gia Long (1802 – 1820) people knew how to use the fibred of La Khe (Ha Dong) to make gild, silk, crape and satin which were high quality materials used for making royal court dressed. The King employed skillful tailors and dyers to make clothes for the feudal rulers in the court with designs and motifs symbolizing Confucianism, power and prestige. This vividly shows that dressing up used to be an important part of life which attracted great attention from the court. It was, perhaps, one of the signs that displayed luxury and power of the royal family in feudal society.
The most common material used for making Hue royal costume were nhieu, lua, sanam, gam, doan, kim tuyen …(gild, crape, silk, gold thread). Besides, early artists also use other materials such as copper, slier, gold, amber, agate in combination with metal fibred to sew on the hats and clothes. These combination brought uniqueness to the royal costume showing both luxury and power of the ruling class.
The way of dressing for the royal family under the Nguyen dynasty was strictly regulate in accordance with the mandarin ranks. For example, the Van Tue (long – life) was used for the king and queen, they used Chinh Hoang (yellow), the Thien Tue ranks was for the crown prince and they used range color, for the eldest princess of the royal family – Xich Tu (red colour), the royal concubines – Dai Hong (pink), Co Dong (bronze) or Cam Bich (purple).in the Nam Giao worship ceremonies, black was used. For the routine audience clothes, the king used yellow, and the other princes of the royal family and mandarins used blue or green, but blue was more popular.
Most of the decoration was sophisticated, representing different symbols. The most popular was the long (dragon), symbolizing royal authority, the object of monolatry. It was called long bao (royal dragon – embroidered robe). Many animals were used in the designs each having its special meaning. Among them is the Phung (phoenix) symbolizes prosperity, richness, the quy (turtle) meaning everlasting and stability, lan (lion) respect with the purpose of obeying the mandarins and loyalty towards the king. In addition, the design of bat buu (eight precious objects) such as a gourd of wine and a bag of poems, a sword, a scroll, a coin and a shellfish all symbolize different meanings.
Among the royal costume, the one for the king was the most sophisticatedly made and decorated. It is a jewel in the crown, a royal dragon – embroidered rode, a formal dress, a belt, curve – tipped boots, an ivory tablet. The King ordered a different set of clothes for his military mandarins. The royal crape robes were bark bronze with four noble animals embroidered with green, yellow, red, white and black threaded together with golden metal threaded together with golden an combined together with golden metal threads displaying pictures of flamingoes which symbolize civilian service. They would be embroidered on the clothes with unicorns on the breast part, symbolizing military service.
The royal costume was made totally by hand and were decorated and embroidered by a few selective famous artists. The artist would sometimes work only on one item. Because the material for the costume is cloth its lifespan is not long. Therefore, this is a precious heritage which needs to be carefully restored and kept for future generations.
At present, the collection of Hue royal costume is being stored and displayed in the museum of Vietnam History, No 1 Pham Ngu Lao Street – Hanoi and the museum of Hue Royal Fine Arts, No 3 Le Truc Road – Hue.
This article written by Lanh Nguyen from Vietnam Heritage Travel
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