Festival costumes of Cà Tu minority people

Due to their life closely-tied Trường Sơn forests and mountains, the costumes of Cà Tu ethnics look quite natural, their dyeing materials are mainly taken from tree-barks, tree-roots or fruits... Their loins, their sleeveless shirts, coats, skirts... can be seen as weaving arts, in a high sense of beauty.

Photo: Trương Văn

It costs Cà Tu women strength and efforts to have such costumes. They grow cotton for seeds, for cotton-fibers, for then dyeing. Colours are derived from tree-roots or tree-barks... and everything is hand-made and decorated with white glass beads. Indigo is the vital colour and it’s seen by the locals as the colour of the soil, of the sun that expresses their world outlook while males’ costumes are women in stripes in red, yellow and white in black background, their loins are just 45cm large, 3-8m long the back-and-front are women in flower-patterns.

           

Men’s overcoats, normally worn on traditional festivals or in winter are woven in black and white, yellow and red in reasonable fashion that make it elegant-looking. But women’s skirts are stitched in two layers about 3m long, the width depends on the personal size. There are decorations but almost in the lower parts of the skirts and it needs tying to be kept close. Their shirts are normally two stitched pieces, 40 – 60cm long and 50-60cm wide, in V-shaped style.

           

These specifications make Cà Tu ethnic people’s costumes along Trường Sơn range differ from those of other ethnic communities in Vietnam.

                                                                   ĐỨC HOAN