Historian Duong Trung Quoc: "National costumes need to be creative and careful"

After the National Costume competition night within the framework of the Miss Grand Vietnam 2024 contest held on July 30, historian Duong Trung Quoc commented that this year's designs contributed to introducing Vietnamese cultural characteristics, through exploiting historical elements from ancient to modern times.

However, the historian also emphasized that creating cultural costumes will encounter certain difficulties. Therefore, besides creative efforts, candidates need to be careful.

"Using fashion as the main language requires young designers to dare to create and convince others to accept. In a context where the audience is easy to comment, I hope everyone has goodwill and tolerance so that designers can bring many costumes that honor traditional values," said the historian.

As the General Director of this competition night, Mr. Hoang Nhat Nam said that this year, the contestants faced more difficulties because the competition night's venue was far from Ho Chi Minh City.

"Transportation greatly affects the quality of the costumes. Many designs are bulky, with costumes 20m long and weighing several dozen kilos. I have a headache transporting costumes and props from Ho Chi Minh City to Phan Thiet.

The Organizing Committee has a method of disassembling props and costumes from Ho Chi Minh City to Phan Thiet for the contestants, then continuing to assemble and process. The workload is huge and elaborate. During the transportation process, many problems occurred and had to be overcome," he said.

The director said the Organizing Committee hired two large trucks to transport more than 30 costumes. He said that although many of the costumes were bulky, the contestants demonstrated their ability to handle situations and stage presence.

The director also admitted that there was a lot of pressure when organizing the national cultural costume competition outdoors for the first time. The male director was not really satisfied because the weather conditions were not favorable, causing difficulties in the organization.

"In the past few days, it has been raining continuously in Phan Thiet, and the stage has been affected quite a bit. Holding the show outdoors makes me worried that the stage will not be warm enough and that the show will not be able to turn into a festival of art, beauty, and fashion," the director said.

He said the workload of organizing an outdoor show is double, even triple, compared to organizing it in a closed space. The Organizing Committee depends on weather conditions to find ways to handle and respond.

"Despite the strong wind, luckily the rain stopped when the show started. In the end, the competition night was quite complete. But I wish I had more time to take better care of the competition night, control the costumes and surrounding materials to optimize this year's National Costume Night," said the director.