Mien embroidery and women’s livelihoods in Northern Vietnam
About ten years ago now, my older brother bought me a beautifully embroidered jacket from Sa Pa in northern Vietnam. At the time, I knew little about its cultural significance or the processes that went into making it. It was only after a recent trip to northwest Vietnam that I learnt how central textiles like my jacket are to the women who live there.
In fact, these jackets, and the embroidery upon them, are visual embodiments of the Hmong and Dao ethnic groups based in Northwest Vietnam. As Turner, Bonnin and Michaud tell us “[a]s Hmong have no indigenous script, and few within the community use those developed by outsiders, oral histories and textiles continue to be a key means of maintaining and communicating historical information, stories, folklore, spiritual beliefs and cultural practices’. The abundant motifs stitched into these garments thus capture the Hmong’s way of life — “events, mythologies, spiritual practices … objects, animals, and plants’.
The craft behind the embroidery is also pivotal to Hmong and Dao women’s lifecycle. Hmong girls begin learning the craft as early as seven to master the skill they’ll eventually use to stitch their wedding clothes. Amongst the Hmong, it is believed that ‘a women’s sexual desirability and potential to be — or status as — a good mother are intimately tied to how accomplished she is at these activities”. As Turner, Bonnin and Michaud relate, occasions like New Year mark an important moment for women to display how skilled they are at embroidery by wearing their finest clothes and hopefully appealing to ‘prospective suitors’. Once married, women’s embroidery skills remain pivotal as they are expected to make clothes for their “husbands, children and parents-in-law”. As our host Tamay showed us, this can take months! Indeed, she’d been working on part of a sleeve that had taken her four days so far.
Learning about the cultural context of my mien embroidered jacket made me feel uncomfortable. Not only did it raise the question of cultural appropriation but it also challenged my gendered beliefs. I felt that it was inappropriate to wear textiles so interlinked with the cultural identity of the Hmong and Dao. I also felt it was unfair that women’s capabilities were so tied to their ability as embroiderers. However, meeting Tamay showed me that it was more complicated than this, and that viewing it in such a way actually served to undermine the value of the textiles and the importance they had in her community.
Women’s textile livelihoods in Northwest Vietnam: Tamay’s insight.
While I visited Sa Pa, I was lucky enough to stay with Tamay, who works in partnership with Hannah to form one part of Tamay & Me — a business that makes beautifully crafted embroidered jackets. While my initial impression of Sa Pa and neighbouring Ta Phin (Tamay’s village), was of a society strictly divided by gender, Tamay challenged these assumptions. Ironically, the embroidered textiles which I believed to reinforce gender disparity, in many ways provided a means of emancipation for Hmong and Dao women. Instead allowing them to upturn their ascribed gender roles.
The scholars Turner, Bonnin and Michaud reinforce this: ‘Hmong women’s access to trade, earning an income, and the associated independence and physical mobility, has customarily been limited compared to that of men’. Yet being the gendered activity that it is, mien embroidery offers women their own route into trade, earning an income and independence. Indeed, meeting Tamay, it was clear that she was running the show — she made her own clothing, sold her friends’ clothing at her market stall in the centre of Sa Pa and she collaborates with Hannah as part of Tamay & Me. Being a skilled embroider actually allowed Tamay to act as businesswomen in her village.
Additionally, as Turner, Bonnin and Michaud point out — while the task of embroidery can overwhelm women, it also brings them together. This can be seen in the case of newly weds. In the context of moving into their new husband’s home, women are expected to make embroidered clothes for their family, something which can take a long time and a lot of effort. Yet, as Turner, Bonnin and Michaud highlight, this task can actually bring daughter-in-law and mother-in-law together, as they bond over the making of the clothes. In what can be an intimidating and unfamiliar environment, it creates the opportunity for the daughter-in-law to gain an ally within her new household.
Rather than simply constraining women then, this form of embroidery seemed to enable women. The question around wearing these jackets thus becomes more complicated. These textiles actually provide women with a source of livelihood and a way to assert agency in the narrative of their everyday lives.
Indeed, women have used their skill to adapt to an increasing influx of tourists and make an additional income for themselves. As Turner, Bonnin and Michaud point out: while women used to throw out their embroidered clothes when they’d had too much wear, now they cut them up and stitch them into lots of different kind of products — cushions, bags or purses. All items which have proven more appealing to urban and western audiences. To choose not to wear them then, could actually be seen as denying these women the opportunity to create lucrative businesses for themselves.
Reflections on Modernization and the demise of mien embroidery
What’s significant about Tamay & Me, is that they seek to keep the embroidered tradition alive. In the context of modernization — the industrialisation of mien embroidery in neighbouring China and the increase in western clothing influences — this could be seen as an impossible feat.
Indeed, while I was in Ta Phin, it was evident that while older women wore the traditional mien embroidered clothing, many of their daughters were dressed in jeans and t-shirts. Amongst the younger generation, learning the craft of mien embroidery may not carry the same significance then that it once had.
However, as Turner, Bonnin and Michaud have argued, while certain Hmong women may wear industrially produced embroidered clothing (it is easier after all), they still develop their embroidery skills to make clothing for occasions such as New Year, their weddings or their funerals. Interestingly, one girl we saw on a number of occasions throughout our trip, although always dressed in jeans, also always seemed to be embroidering in her spare time.
Rather than view it as a disappearing craft then, perhaps we should view it as a craft that could be part of a multi-faceted future. As Turner, Bonnin and Michaud state — while it may be that ‘many young women are embarking on a process of self-reconstruction’ in the wake of increasing western influences from the city, it may be that they are ‘developing two separate identities: one as the “dutiful daughter” accountable to family and cultural obligations, and the other as a “modern girl whose experience and lifestyle are tied to a physical urban space, and more significantly, a symbolic space that extends far beyond the urban space of Sa Pa itself’.
Even in the context of modernity then, it can be argued that there is space for this craft to survive. Indeed, as Kaviraj states, while modernity is often understood as a phenomenon that is ‘inexorably singular’, it should in fact be seen as ‘inescapably plural’. Women might wear jeans, but they will still learn to embroider.
Final reflections
In short I have sought to convey the complexity behind Hmong and Dao textiles and ask the question about whether we should wear clothes of which we have little understanding. I don’t think there is a simple answer to this. However, in light of the livelihood opportunities it provides women, then it could be argued that buying and paying a fair price for a beautifully handcrafted piece of clothing is only a good thing.
Aishath Green.
Photo credits: Cameron Bray
