Ao Dai Museum

The Ao Dai Museum in Ho Chi Minh City showcases the evolution of Vietnam’s traditional Ao Dai attire through various historical periods, featuring original garments, photographs, and stories linked to Vietnamese identity.

Planning your visit

The ao dai is the Vietnamese national dress — a long fitted tunic slit to the waist worn over loose trousers — and the museum in Ho Chi Minh City traces its evolution across the twentieth century, which turns out to be a political history as much as a fashion one.

The garment was radically modernised in the 1930s by artists of the Cat Tuong school, who fitted it to the body under French influence; it was discouraged in the north after 1954 as bourgeois and impractical; it survived in the south; it was suppressed after reunification for economic reasons, and revived from the 1990s as a symbol of national identity. It is now standard for schoolgirls, teachers, airline staff and formal occasions.

The museum holds original garments belonging to notable Vietnamese women, alongside photographs, and the setting is a traditional-style garden complex on the city's outskirts.

Visits often include trying on an ao dai, which is more informative than it sounds — the cut explains the posture.

Bookable options include tours with ao dai try-on included. Current availability is shown below.