10-20-2025 – The Vietnamese Áo Dài in a Time of War: Fashion, Citizenship, and Nationalism (1954–1975) with Ann Marie Leshkowich and Martina Thucnhi Nguyen
Monday, October 20, 4 PM-5:30 PM
121 Bay State Road, Boston MA
Please register here.
In a time of war, fashion can be a powerful weapon. An exhibition currently on view at College of the Holy Cross explores how First Ladies of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) used Vietnam’s national costume—the áo dài—to symbolize modernity and cultural heritage. Honoring the 50th anniversary of the end of an international and civil war that haunts us to this day, co-curators Leshkowich and Nguyen highlight the role of Vietnamese women and the political importance of fashion.
Ann Marie Leshkowich is Professor of Anthropology at College of the Holy Cross. She researches gender, economic transformation, class, fashion, and social work in Vietnam. She is author of Essential Trade: Vietnamese Women in a Changing Marketplace (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014; awarded Harry J. Benda Prize, 2016) and co-editor of Traders in Motion: Identities and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace (Cornell University Press, 2018), Neoliberalism in Vietnam (positions: asia critique, 2012), and Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress (Berg, 2003). Her research has been published in American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, and Fashion Theory.
Nguyen, Leshkowich, and Tuong Vu (University of Oregon) are co-curators of the exhibition, “The Vietnamese Áo Dài in a Time of War: Fashion, Citizenship, and Nationalism (1954–1975),” on view at College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA) through December 19, 2025.
Martina Thucnhi Nguyen is Associate Professor of History at Baruch College, City University of New York. She is the author of On Our Own Strength: The Self-Reliant Literary Group and Cosmopolitan Nationalism in Late Colonial Vietnam.