Costume from the Xa Pho people of Vietnam
The Xa Pho are a group living in Lao Cai province in Vietnam and (probably) on the China side of the border nearby. They are few, numbering just a few thousand people, and examples of old Xa Pho textiles are correspondingly rare. They have a very distinctive and attractive dress, consisting of dark indigo cloth jacket and skirt decorated with embroidered designs and panels of seeds arranged in star shapes (on the jacket). There is more information about the Xa Pho group in Michael and Kim Howard's book "Textiles of the Highland Peoples of Northern Vietnam".
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CET50 Xa Pho jacket and skirt set. |
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| CET50: detail of jacket |  |
| CET50: The "other side" of the jacket, which is decorated in the same way on both sides. |  |
| CET50: skirt |  |
| CET50: detail of embroidered motifs on the skirt, said to represent ears of corn |  |
| CET50: the other side of the skirt. |  |