The brightly colored ao dai dress is a powerful symbol for everything elegant about old Vietnam. Worn mostly by women, but also by men, the tunic-style garment has informed currents in Vietnamese fashion for centuries.

As such, it makes an appropriate centerpiece for the Ao Dai Festival—an ambitious event that aims to bring mainstream exposure to traditional Vietnamese style and culture.

The word—which can prove troublesome for the English tongue—is pronounced “ow-zye.” Translated from the Vietnamese, it means “long shirt.” The festival opens Saturday, May 12, with a downtown procession from San Jose City Hall to the San Jose Museum of Art, and continues with a ticketed concert and fashion show at the Fairmont.

The ao dai features slits to the waist on each side, is always worn with pants and comes in a dizzying variety of styles, cuts and colors. It carries many cultural associations for Vietnamese people and is still worn by Vietnamese-Americans for formal occasions, particularly weddings.

The Ao Dai Festival began in 2011 and became an every-other-year event the following year. It was founded by San Jose artist, activist and attorney Jenny Do in the wake of her photo documentary project on human sex trafficking, Humans for Sale.

“I was working with (mostly Vietnamese) victims in Taipei,” Do says, “and it was just so dark and horrific—really just beyond your comprehension.”

Faced with harrowing accounts from the trafficking victims that she interviewed—some reported being chained up naked around the clock—Do felt a need as an artist to symbolically restore what was lost for the victims. “I thought, I have to put the clothes back on these women.”

What followed became a festival celebrating not only Vietnam’s traditional dress, but its larger cultural heritage. The free-to-the-public procession in downtown San Jose will feature a rainbow of styles and designs of the ao dai, worn by men and women, Vietnamese and otherwise. The procession culminates in an opening ceremony at the Circle of Palms in the Fairmont Plaza, during which dancers will celebrate a well-known Vietnamese mythological tale.

“It’s the summoning of Mother Vietnam to come back to the children of Vietnam,” says Trami Nguyen Cron, who will serve as the tale’s narrator.

Meanwhile, at the San Jose Museum of Art, anyone interested can contribute to the making of a single community ao dai to be unveiled later in the festival.

The dinner show at the Fairmont, beginning at 6:30pm, will include a fashion show featuring some of the world’s most prominent designers of the ao dai, along with music from the Saigon Chamber Ensemble and the Upbeat Band.

The evolution of the ao dai has roughly parallelled Vietnam’s standing in the world, Do says. In men’s fashion, the garment largely went out of style in the 20th century because it was seen as a sign of an unsophisticated, agricultural Vietnam.

“Even today,” Do says, “I get a lot of resistance from men.”

For women, the ao dai moved dramatically from an indistinct boxy garment, designed to obscure the female body to a tightly fitted and tailored look, intended to highlight a woman’s curves. The move mirrored expanded rights for women in Vietnam and the outside world. Designers today are being more experimental with the ao dai than ever before.

“It has to be that once a person looks at the dress that the ao dai immediately comes to mind,” Do says. “The moment you move away from that, it becomes something else. It’s not to make the woman’s body cheap. It has to elevate the woman’s body and spirit. It’s well-covered, but it’s still very sensual. It’s an invitation for a person to gaze at her.”

“Generally, it is conservative,” Cron notes. “I’ve seen designs that are a bit more risqué, and there is some sexy stuff. But mostly it’s more conservative. When you see someone wearing the ao dai, they walk differently, they act differently. Probably that’s because it’s so constricting. But there is also a dignity to it.”

The Ao Dai Festival
May 12
Procession, 4:30pm, Free
San Jose City Hall

Evening Program, 6:30pm, $150
The Fairmont Hotel, San Jose

After a three-year run at Pagoda Lounge, Universal Grammar promoter Tommy Aguilar announced online this week he is parting ways with the Fairmont hotel nightclub.

“I would like to say much love to all of those who have dropped in to the Pagoda at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose over the last three years to encounter one of the globetrotting artists we have been able to host on that stage,” Aguilar wrote on Facebook. “We are saddened to say that our programming within the Pagoda will now be over. However, we are also excited for the future as for the mission that Universal Grammar and NewSense (Michael Grammer) set out to accomplish.”

Filling a much-needed niche in the San Jose scene for touring performers from what Aguilar calls the “global soul” spectrum, the list of past acts that touched down at Pagoda is impressive, considering the intimate setting: Little Dragon the same week as two sold-out shows in San Francisco, veteran rapper Talib Kweli, jazz pianist Robert Glasper, soul singer Cody CusnuTT and just recently a double bill Aguilar helped organize for C2SV Music Festival with the Coup and Dam-Funk.

“Our influences in what we book and bring to shows is what we listen to and that stems to a common denominator of soul music,” Aguilar says. “The idea we tried to put out there was this global groove idea with no boundaries. … We also wanted to bring out what was next, emerging artist.”

But that “global groove” wasn’t accompanied by big profits, a motivator for the Fairmont Hotel’s new food and beverage director Christopher Pageaud to make a change, according to Aguilar.

“The Fairmont just pretty much stepped to me, new management in place, and said we need to move on and we’re going to bring in something else,” he says.

Pageaud could not be reached for comment about plans for the space, but local promoter Mauricio Mejia confirmed he is taking over with Saturday night events at the space.

“We going to create more of a consistent weekly lounge type of environment, with open format music and DJs,” Mejia says.

Mejia owns Detox Sundays pool parties, last held at the Fairmont’s pool, and formerly owned the Vault nightclub and consulted at Axis. His first parties at the Pagoda next month include regulars in the Las Vegas scene DJ Zhaldee (Nov. 9), from the Hard Rock Hotel’s Body English Party; DJ Mike Carbonell (Nov. 16), a resident DJ at Wynn Hotel and Tryst Nightclub; and DJ Fabian (Nov. 23) of Encore Hotel’s XS. Local DJs will be booked in the weeks that follow.

Aguilar’s run at Pagoda will end with three more shows: Kaytranada on Oct. 18, Hiatus Kaiyote on Oct. 31 and finishing with a Day of the Dead party on Nov. 1 with the last of his Sonido Clash series featuring Tijuana band Los Macuanos.

After that, he says the Universal Grammar mission will continue with occasional shows at Café Stritch and Blackbird Tavern.

“We just have to create a new outlet, which is building a new venue or finding a team that will work with us,” he says.

A special Labor Day Weekend edition of Detox Sunday took over the rooftop pool at the Fairmont in downtown San Jose over the weekend with DJs and a crowd that was ready to party.

Photos by CJ Storm.