🇻🇳The true skill that is auntie fashion

Auntie fashion. Dobo—it's kind of like the T-shirts you wear at a festival~... huh, what am I even talking about? you might be thinking, but it suddenly struck me that it ties into Japan's T-shirt culture. This was back when I took a jungle cruise in Can Tho. Among the rowers, the proportion of middle-aged ladies is pretty high.

The vibrant open-collar shirt paired with black pants below looks almost like a uniform. This is the standard. There's hardly ever any overlap. (Places that deliberately make uniforms are a separate case.) Everyone wears subtly different shades and different patterns. I'm sure they each choose according to their own tastes.

Solids exist, but patterns are everywhere

Floral and geometric patterns. A nostalgic touch

The 1970s, or maybe a little earlier

Still, precisely because of the bold colors and the punchy design, when you combine them well you get a real edge to the look. Surprisingly stylish. I think it's almost all polyester—it shrinks a little, but above all it's easy to wear. I don't know much about textiles, but just looking at it lifts my spirits. That's the kind of pattern it is. When I think about the heat of a Japanese summer, it suddenly occurs to me that from now on, we may need clothes like these. There may be a lot of Japanese people who think T-shirts are cool. After all, most tourists who come here are in shorts or jeans with a T-shirt—the slightly thick kind. But in Vietnam, people don't really wear 100% cotton T-shirts, do they. It's hot, and it's slow to dry. If you bring it in half-dry, it's the kind of fabric that ends up smelling awful, so it's out. Thinner fabric with some polyester in it dries quickly and stays comfortable much longer. Lately I often see Western tourists wearing sports-brand T-shirts, and that makes perfect sense. Because it's hot. And then there's Dobo. The reassurance of polyester. A bit on the thick side, and it holds its shape well. Slip it on, wash it in a flash, dry it in a flash. Practically forever. When you look at the laundry-drying spots at Vietnamese homes, it's three or four per person. No, maybe even more than that. There's pretty much always something hanging out to dry.

The scenery you run into while walking through the alleys. At the market, I even ran into a fashionista auntie doing her shopping decked out in a full pattern-ON-pattern-ON-pattern outfit like this.

When I recommended it to a friend who came over to hang out, saying "It's super comfy," they loved it so much they went on a shopping spree. They got a kick out of the patterns too, saying with a laugh, "After circling around a few times, yeah, this totally works." They say it kind of looks Marimekko-ish, Marni-ish… not entirely a stretch. In short, for the Japanese summer, these are going into heavy rotation. The fun part is that the patterns almost never overlap with anyone else's. Even running into so many T-shirt-wearing folks at a rock festival, there's almost never a "hey, we're the same" moment. It's a completely different feeling from wearing the same T-shirt at your favorite martial arts event or a singer's concert. I totally get the urge to get hooked on picking out a dobo at the market. Relocation Life Ranking