Vietnamese fashion (4): Charming tiny artworks
Design accessories for mobiles, motorbikes, belts, fingernails and even teeth, are now big business in Vietnam’s cities.
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| The tiny charming. |
1000 ways to design
On a moving bus in Vietnam’s busy capital, the crowded streets often caused the bus to jam its brakes, worrying passengers on board. But still they did not fail to notice a 16-17 year old girl sitting next to the bus door.
Wearing a skirt with twinkling stars, and with matching stars twinkling on her handbag and boots, she attracted special attention from the passengers. The design also appeared on her fingernails and mobile phone, which kept ringing with new messages.
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The girl, Thuy Van, a student from Hanoi Amsterdam School, seemed to enjoy the attention. Van boasted that she had a number of mobile phone covers, each designed with a different flourish. “It has to be suitable with each outfit. In fact, it is not perfect, I would prefer a number of different mobiles, but it would be too expensive. So changing the cover is a good choice”, Van said.
Besides the mobile phone “an indispensable” as Van said, she also adds tiny designs to her school knapsack, finger-nails, shoes, hats… almost all things around her.
On Sunday, Van borrowed her mother’s motorbike, a black Nouvo to go round on. “On that day, I wear a black and white style suitable with the motorbike.” Every Monday and Thursday, she changes absolutely all of her belongings to white, since on those days she has to wear a white uniform, demanded by her school’s rules.
In their free time, Van and her friends hit the streets in colourful clothing with images of hearts, lips, roses, favourite singers or football players. Sometimes they even apply fate tattoos. Girls around Van’s age, as lucky and rich as her, and mostly in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are now frequent customers of a service that appeared in Vietnam recently.
Belonging make up: a thriving business
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On sidewalks, men keep waving encouraging customers to enter. For a mobile phone cover to prevent scratching customers pay between VND15, 000 – 20,000. A cover with a painted design, such as a heart or rose, a small dog or the logo of a football team sells for under VND35, 000.
Covers with more complex designs range from VND50, 000 to 300,000. In the beginning, the service was demanded by customers afraid their new valuables would be scratched. Later more styles were developed.
“It is an art” said Nguyen Hai Ninh, owner of a “mobile phone make up” shop at 171 Ton Duc Thang, “For sure, it is the art of businessmen and their customers”. Ninh’s business provides re-painting, change of colour, drawing, and printed images, sometime the mobile’s owner’s photo is attached to it. Ninh said his customers sometimes prefer to stick glass-beads, or even diamonds on their phones.
“Sometime, the decorations are much more expensive than the mobile. Rich customers want to show how wealthy they are”, the shop owner said, but warned that decorations could drop off the mobile.
Previously, Ninh just did the service for mobile phone shops, which needed him to renew second hand phones. “Then I saw it as a thriving business and decided to open my own shop. It was a good idea, my business is now so busy” Ninh added, refusing to reveal his income.
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| Art and fashion.
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Fingernails = Art + fashion
For many women, manicures are an indispensable thing to do on the weekend. It is also a service that young people most want to learn. From the basics of polishing, women (and sometimes men) now prefer to transform their fingernails into artworks, “both art and fashion in one” one young girl said.
The birth of the service draws on fashion’s market for cute and rich styling. Through painting, sticking, adding precious gems and sculpturing, in the hands of a skilled nail-artist even lumpy fingers can be transformed into special artworks.
Thu Ha, a nail-artist at 7 Van Bao Street, said her customers willingly spend time for the art, some even changing their colour each day.
Just over a year ago, designs for nails were mostly curves, straight lines, or basic colour images such as a leaf, heart or star. Now, the designs are much more varied, often changed according to the season, holidays, and other events.
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Minh Tam, a customer of Ms Thu Ha, said she liked to paint her nails white from Monday to Friday “to save time when I go to university”. On Saturday though, she hangs round with her boyfriend on motorbikes, wearing either pink, blue or yellow skirts, she also paints her nails to match. Sometimes she uses 10 different colours on her fingers “suitable for colourful clothing”.
Ha said some nail-artists, such as her can draw difficult images such as dragons. The most expensive design is painting a customer’s photo on her nails.
“It is very hard-work, some of my clients like to paint their boyfriends, as a way to show their love” As Ha said, just few nail artists in Hanoi can provide this service. The cost for it could range from VND50, 000 to 300,000.
Together with painting, nail-artists sometime bake skilful images, made by powder, plastic or metals on. The baked images can last for two weeks, and take one to two hours to do.
From the growing demand, the service develops quickly. In nail shops, trainees are numerous, including Viet Kieu and foreigners, although paying for a traineeship is not cheap: VND3mil – VND5mil for a three month course.
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