When speaking of Vietnamese attire, everyone knows the Áo dài is the traditional costume of Vietnamese women. But what about men? Vietnamese men have traditional garments such as the áo the khăn xếp (traditional men's tunic and turban), áo thụng (long robe), áo tấc (ceremonial gown), or the men's áo dài.
The traditional dress of Vietnamese men in the Red River Delta cultural region—a foundational cultural area and the cradle of the Vietnamese people—has many distinctive features.
The attire of male rice farmers here is, first and foremost, a cultural adaptation to the nature of the Red River Delta, a unique and distinctive cultural region encompassing the basins of the Red River, Thai Binh River, and Ma River. This area experiences all four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. However, the two most prominent seasons in the North are winter and summer, reflecting the region's erratic climate: hot, humid, and stifling summer monsoons, and bone-chilling, piercing winter winds. Therefore, both men and women favor dark colors, especially earthy brown, with variations from light brown to deep brown... Women working wear dark skirts, brown shirts, and brown bodices (yếm). Men working, when coping with the intense heat of the Red River Delta in summer, laboring "two dews, one sun" (from dawn to dusk) in the fields, often go bare-backed, completely exposing their upper bodies, while wearing a loincloth (khố) below. In ancient times, Vietnamese men would "go shirtless and wear a loincloth," while Vietnamese women would "wear skirts and bodices," these being the most common garments during the hot season when both men and women toiled, "husband plowing, wife transplanting, water buffalo harrowing." However, this style of dress later evolved into an aesthetic ideal in traditional Vietnamese attire. Men wearing a "loincloth with eel-tail ends" (khố đuôi lươn) were considered the most beautiful, on par with women wearing a bright red bodice revealing their midriff... and it was deemed that only then... was it charming. Later, men bared their backs less often; they also wore short shirts with two lower pockets, sometimes with side slits, sometimes without, called áo cánh in the Red River Delta, while in the Mekong Delta, Southerners called it áo bà ba. However, the lower garment for men, initially a loincloth, later developed into trousers (a change partly due to the late 17th century, when the Nguyen Lords, to create a distinction from the North, ordered men and women in the South to "use Northern-style clothing" (Chinese) to signify change. Even earlier, during the period of Chinese domination, Chinese feudal rulers had sought to completely replace Vietnamese lower garments with trousers for both men and women).
Traditional attire of ancient Vietnamese men
According to the book Cơ sở văn hóa Việt Nam (Foundations of Vietnamese Culture) by Trần Ngọc Thêm, Vietnamese men, as the masculine element, were the first to adopt trousers into their dress culture, and thanks to this, trousers increasingly penetrated traditional Vietnamese attire. Of course, the Vietnamese, being a practical people in their dress, did not simply copy the "foreign" trousers verbatim. Instead, they "internalized," or more accurately, "Vietnamized" them into the quần lá tọa (wide-legged trousers). According to the same description in Cơ sở văn hóa Việt Nam, the quần lá tọa for Vietnamese men is a type of trouser with wide, straight legs, a deep crotch, and a wide waistband. When worn, the man ties a belt over the trousers, then lets the excess waistband above the belt hang down loosely over it (hence the name lá tọa, meaning "sitting leaf"). The quần lá tọa is thus perfectly suited to Vietnam's hot, sunny climate; the wide legs make it as cool for men to wear as a skirt is for Vietnamese women. This innovation also allowed Vietnamese men wearing these airy trousers to "diversify" their types of labor, because the deep crotch allowed them to easily adjust the leg length by pulling the waistband up or down, making them comfortable on various types of fields—dry fields, deep paddies, dry fields, wet fields... It seems that while the quần lá tọa was perfectly suited for men in the fields, for attending festivals or ceremonies, Vietnamese men had to create another type of trouser. This was the quần ống sớ (narrow-legged trousers): white, with narrow legs, a higher, neater crotch, and more presentable than the quần lá tọa. This was only natural, as Vietnamese men also adhered to the traditional principles of their people in the art of dressing well: "skill in eating brings fullness, skill in keeping warm brings comfort." This is also the core of the cultural approach to clothing among the Vietnamese, in their flexible response to the natural environment. And in the evolution of traditional Vietnamese men's attire, later on, Vietnamese men, during festivals and village celebrations, came to wear the áo dài, often the dark áo the (a type of thin, dark tunic). Men of the upper class even wore the áo dài in daily life...
Source: Cơ sở văn hóa Việt Nam (Foundations of Vietnamese Culture), Facebook page Đại Việt Cổ Phong (Great Viet Ancient Style