Vietnam designers tasked with dressing APEC outfits
HANOI - They sported ponchos in Chile, silk shirts in China and bomber jackets in Canada. Now with world leaders heading to Vietnam in eight months for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit, local designers have been tasked with finding a new outfit.
he APEC tradition of leaders donning the national costume of the host nation for the commemorative photo shoot would continue, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan told reporters Wednesday.
"We shall follow the APEC tradition," Khoan said. "We are actually asking Vietnamese designers to think (of) and propose models of costumes for the leaders' meeting," he said.
Khoan did not mention any particular costume but Vietnam's national dress is an ao dai -- a body-hugging top worn by women that flows over wide trousers to the feet.
"One of our biggest difficulties now is that there are leaders who are women, and they are of different sizes," Khoan said apparently alluding to the diminutive Philippine President Gloria Arroyo and the tall New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
"So our objective should be to choose a costume suitable to all," he said.
Agence France Presse - February 15, 2006.
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